Blithe Spirit

Blithe Spirit, loosely based on Noel Coward's classic farce. We have Dan Stevens as a writer who's trying to turn his novel into a screenplay. He has an empty-headed wife (Isla Fsher) who swans about the estate. With friends, they go to see a show Madame Arcati (Judi Dench) is putting on, but her act goes wrong and she's exposed as a phony. Because Stevens is thinking a lot about his dead first wife (Leslie Mann) he gets Arcati to come to the house (a sprawling art deco thing) for a seance. Of course she summons the dead wife who, although it's 1937, has a #metoo sensibility.

Things turn slapsticky, and although the stars try hard, it doesn't work. One moment the ghosty wife can't slap Stevens because she's only ectoplasm but the next minute she can play a piano. Worst of all is the version of Arcati. Dench plays her as an aggrieved victim who's sham has been discovered and she's resentful. Bleh. The various Arcati's of film, TV, and stage, have generally played her as a swooping eccentric who's on the dotty side: Margaret Rutherford, Mildred Natwick, Ruth Gordon, Angela Lansbury, Penelope Keith.

This version plays like a sitcom, with the three main characters as madcaps and Dench's shuffling dud of a medium as an unfunny subplot.