I was skeptical. I had good reason to be. The story of Florence Foster Jenkins is not unlike that of Eddie the Eagle. Neither person deserves the big spotlight. You have to earn your way onto a big stage. This is true of everyone. Yes, I feel awful that syphilis robbed FFloJenk of her potential, but that doesn’t make Carnegie Hall right. Super Bowl teams are not replete with sob stories and guys who paid their way on the team. There are literally hundreds, nay thousands, of actually talented individuals who never got to live their dream of playing Carnegie Hall and some were denied this opportunity because a tin-eared, big-pocketed granny hogged the stage with her unintentional comedy.
Ok, I got that out of the way. Let’s talk about this movie. As I say, I was skeptical, but I quite enjoyed the cinematic take on the William Hung of 1944. Something of a wartime Manhattan dowager, Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep) loved the stage. Loved it so much, in fact, she often took supporting roles in small dinner theater shows run by her current husband, St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant). Your name is “St. Clair,” seriously? What happens if you’re canonized? Would that make you “St. St. Clair?” No matter. FFloJenk is dying. The syphilis contracted through her first marriage cannot be held at bayfield indefinitely. We’re privy to the tender moments of St. Clair putting her to bed with doting affection and reciting verse until she falls asleep … and then we see him take a cab to the downtown apartment where he lives with a mistress.
I think I was ready to give thumbs up at this moment – see? Now there’s how you make a complex portrayal. He truly loves his wife … and he’s truly cheating on her at the same time. People can wear many faces. It happens.
Inspired by an operatic standout, FFloJenk gets the singing bug and decides it’s time to step up her solo game. It should be noted here that FFloJenk is Fifty Shades of Daft. She doesn’t know about her husband’s infidelities, she doesn’t know what normal people go through to survive, and she sure-as-Hell doesn’t know that she cannot sing. Not at all. Not one stinking note. I would best describe her attempts to bring vocal pleasure as a blind huntsman yelling, “PULL!” and then shooting, more-or-less, in the hemisphere of the target. Most of the comedy in this movie is derived from Meryl’s chaotic warbling.
The lengths to which St. Clair travels to support and protect his wife are almost heroic –hand-picking audience members, sequestering musical instructors, denying the press and the endless, endless obsequiousness with repect to her “talent.” Even as I know this is all to support the fragile ego of a very rich person, I still found myself rooting vigorously 
for St. Clair. Don’t let her down, man. The best scenes of the film are the ones in which Hugh Grant has to defeat the world to enable his wife. Speaking of which, the third great performance in this film belongs to Simon Helberg as hired pianist Cosmé McMoon. He knows she’s awful, but this is a paying gig, and good one. How far can he be pushed to play the game?
At the end of Florence Foster Jenkins, I was left wondering exactly what she did hear. We get a small sample of how her voice sounds to her when a vision of the “good” Meryl Streep replaces the “bad” one. Kudos to Ms. Streep for playing below her talent – we all know the actress can sing; I’ve seen it half a dozen movies already. Could the real FFloJenk really not tell the difference between her voice and something melodious? That seems kind of amazing to me. I mean, were that the case, wouldn’t her accompanist also be a tin-eared musical failure? How about random pieces of music? Wouldn’t she only find harmony in dissonance? It’s impossible to say … and Florence Foster Jenkins, the film, probably fudged a little in the telling. Still, unlike many films aimed at septuagenarians, this material is capable of entertaining a far greater swath of humanity than the grey hairs it appeals to.
♪Would you like to swing in a hall
Even with no talent at all
And be better off than you earned
Or would you rather be a tool?
A tool is an animal with egg on his face
His life is a terrible disgrace
He got no game when makes his move
And always has something left to prove
And by the way, if you ridicule all school
You might grow up to be a tool
Or would you like to swing in a hall
Set yourself up for the big fall
And be better off than you earned
Or would you rather be a Stan?♫
Rated PG-13, 110 Minutes
D: Stephen Frears
W: Nicholas Martin
Genre: Breaking eardrums, oldstyle
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Contemporaries of FFloJenk
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Prodigies without patrons
♪ Parody inspired by “Swinging on a Star”
