Military Wives review – feel good dramedy hits a few bum notes

Peter Cattaneo first made his name with the true story comedy The Full Monty back in 1997. His latest, Military Wives, is very much a film in the same mould: big-hearted, honest, and ultimately uplifting. Inspired by a true story that’s equally jolly and melancholy, it takes us to a part of life in the UK that will be alien to many and fashions a feel good story that anyone can enjoy. It’s flawed, sometimes simplistic stuff, but easily reaches its admittedly modest ambitions, drawing laughs, tears, and letting you out on a high.

Whilst not an exact retelling of the true story, Military Wives is mostly inspired by a BBC documentary on the UK’s first Military Wives Choir, a community organisation designed as a distraction and emotional outlet for the worried spouses of active service members out on deployment. For an outsider, it is fascinating to gain an insight into life on an army base, a makeshift small town that houses all the service members’ spouses and kids, with a unique mix of community cosiness and military sterility.

Less immediately successful is the story itself, which follows the choir’s journey from its initial establishment, through some rather predictable growing pains, and to a performance at the Royal Albert Hall for the “Festival of Remembrance.” Though this central story is fun, it too often takes a back seat to the personality clash between the group’s leaders. There’s the upper-class, uptight Kate (Kristin Scott Thomas), who wants the choir to be good and the more laid-back Lisa (Sharon Horgan), who’s more concerned with the women having fun.

This bickering is sometimes entertaining, sometimes tiresome, but Kate is too unlikeable a protagonist for the conflict to be compelling, and it’s too easy to side with Lisa every time. Kate is authoritarian and wildly out of touch, displaying the kind of condescending worldview of extreme privilege that would define a comic relief character in any other film. Cattaneo and writers Roseanne Flynn and Rachel Tunnard try to give Kate a grand, humanising emotional outburst towards the end, but the broadness of the character in both the writing and Scott Thomas’s performance holds this moment back from having much power.

When the focus is on the women as a group, though, Military Wives is on far safer ground, and even the most cynical audience member will likely find themselves tapping along to the big sing-alongs. The final performance is utterly brilliant, too, erasing any previous qualms with beautiful vocals and unabashed sincerity. Cattaneo’s camera fixes in close-up on the women’s faces and you’re right there with them, under the glaring spotlights.

There’s no denying that Military Wives is scrappy and uneven, and it lacks the social-realist bite that elevated The Full Monty above so many of its copycat peers. But the big showstopper scenes are pulled off with enough grace and good will that these problems disappear in the moment. A warm, flawed, very British spectacle.