Movie Review: Florence Foster Jenkins

Historical movies that give a more complete explanation of a famous event in history or inform the audience about some person or event in history that we never knew about are some of the best reasons why movies are made. However, before a movie like this should be considered worth doing, one would think that the subject matter would have to be important enough first before spending the money and taking the huge financial risk to produce it. I wondered during most of the 2 hours why this movie was made because while the story is somewhat interesting it really is not compelling enough to keep your interest for an entire two hours. On top of this, the producers of this movie failed to realize that listening to the screeching and bad singing sounds of Florence Foster Jenkins who was famous for being a very bad singer is that over time the sound of her singing would become unbearable and annoying. This fact became very obvious with this movie because at first her singing caused people in the audience I was in to laugh but over repeated scenes with Jenkins singing the horrible sounds she was making it became almost impossible to listen to. One has to admire Meryl Streep, who can sing in real life, with her ability to sing very badly and for this role there is talk of a 20th Academy Award nomination for her despite the fact that most of this film is rather boring and way too long.

From the Wikipedia article link above, there is mention that Jenkins contracted syphilis some years earlier and that could be the main reason for her inability to realize that she had no singing ability. For me, the most interesting part of this movie was the fact that so many people were able to fool Jenkins into believing that she could actually sing for so long a period of time, until one last performance at Carnegie Hall where critics were allowed to attend. Why did the people in Jenkin's life pull off this hoax and lie to her for so long is not fully explained in the movie other than perhaps they felt sorry for her during her later years? This movie also reminds all of us of the rare combination of gifts that are required to be able to sing. Singing well involves not only the physical mechanics involved​ but it's​ also the linkages of the brain and the ability to realize that you are in tune and to adjust your voice through the ​process of singing any song. Singing very well is in fact, a very rare gift because of all the combinations of skills that must come together to give anyone this rare ability.

I thought that all the actors involved in this very average movie did a good job, including Hugh Grant, Meryl Streep and Simon Helberg, but it was not enough for me to recommend this film because it was just too boring and the story was not big enough to care about. If your a huge fan of Meryl Streep than you should probably see this film, otherwise, this movie can be missed.





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