Director Stephen Frears
Starring Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins
Rated M
Score 6/6

Laura Henderson buys an old London theater and opens it up as the Windmill, a performance hall which goes down in history for, amongst other things, its all-nude revues.

For those of you who might be wondering there have been some odd reasons why I have decided and yes, those reasons are usually because the day had a “Y” in it. The reason why I tracked down a copy of this was because of a line of dialogue I could not quite remember. The exact line in question one of Mrs. Henderson’s lines ‘My dear you must never interrupt a perfectly good argument. I completely lost my train of thought’. I have vague memories of watching this in the cinema and I am surprised that I remembered half of that line.

Mrs. Henderson Presents is a feel-good movie, everybody needs to watch a few more of those these days. I have found that a good rule of thumb to judge ‘feel-good’ movies by are the kind of movies that reach inside you and give you a warm tingling sensation of happiness. I know it is an odd way to describe and how it must sound strange to people, but I find that it happens when I watch the really good movies. Though it should be noted there are some sad moments the movie starts at funeral and the ‘We will never close’ speech given by Mrs. Henderson towards the end of the movie had me in tears.
I suppose my biggest complaint is that some of the secondary characters could come across as having little substance to them, but that really does not take much away from the flow of the movie. Will Young (who was making his acting debut) had some nice musical moments and then there is Kelly Reilly who is brilliant as Maureen and after a brief look at her filmography it turns out I have seen her in more movies then I originally thought. But the driving force for the entire movie is the chemistry between Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins. Dench’s portrayal of Mrs. Henderson can only be described as a woman with the will of a force of nature. While Hoskins portrayal of Vivian Van Damm walked the line of man who had just a strong will as Mrs. Henderson, was a great impresario and yet managed to be a father figure to the performers of the Windmill.