Review: St Trinians impresses and amuses

By Joe Roberts • December 21, 2007 - 17:30

The film updates Searle's original creations for a world with where our social mores have shifted.

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With an all-star cast, the latest St Trinian's film brings the unruly schoolgirls kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.

Facing closure from the bank, and under pressure from the government for her unorthodox teaching methods, headmistress Camilla Fritton (played with great relish by Rupert Everett), rallies her girls round.

Pitting their wits against former-flame, Education Minister Geoffrey Thwaites (Colin Firth), and her rougish brother, Carnaby (also played by Everett), Fritton joins her pupils in a plot to steal famous painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Dividing the girls into moderns tribes such as emos, chavs, posh totty and trustafarians, and featuring recreational drug-taking and school girl sex-chat lines, the film updates Searle's original creations for a world with where our social mores have shifted.

Yet it retains his anarchic sense of fun that made the original books and films so fun.

Filled with one-liners, the script lampoons modern pop phenomena, from Harry Potter ('it's like Hogwarts for pikeys', says new girl Annabelle, played by Talulah Riley, when she arrives at the run-down school) to Pride and Prejudice, with Colin Firth providing a hilarious send up of the scene when Mr Darcy emerging from a lake.

And great comic turns from the cast, which includes Russell Brand as Flash Harry and Stephen Fry as himself, ensure that it's brought to life in an engaging way, making the film a worthy addition to the St Trinian's canon.

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