Who's in It: Frances McDormand, Amy Adams, Lee Pace, Shirley Henderson, Tom Payne, Ciarán Hinds
The Basics: Miss Pettigrew (McDormand) is a middle-aged governess, adrift for 20 years of grief after losing her fiancé during World War I. She's fired from job after job, and when by chance — also broke and starving — she has the opportunity to lie about her qualifications as a "social secretary" to a rising starlet (Adams), she does so.
What's the Deal? Niche marketing reaches new levels of refinement with this fairy tale for a very specific audience: older women and the people who identify with older women. Its job is to comfort people who need to bathe in luxury costumes and sets, British accents (even the one Pushing Daises' Pace is trying to pull off), vintage pre-World War II-lifestyle accessories and apolitical charming princes who come in to save the day. That it's kind of boring is just part of the package.
Engineered for Your Napping Pleasure: What's great about this is that you know right from the start that no serious danger will befall Miss Pettigrew and that, most likely, she's going to wind up happier than she ever imagined — and that's even before the makeover scene. So even if you nap through (and I dozed off twice), you won't have a single problem picking right back up. The word "complicated" doesn't even exist in this world.
Who Saves the Day (Besides the Charming Prince Guy): McDormand, for giving what could have been a train wreck of a character a solid underpinning of melancholy that draws out your empathy instead of your annoyance at her inability to get her life together.
Where You've Seen Shirley Henderson Before: She pops out of this movie because of her odd little bird voice even you can't quite place her from somewhere else. That somewhere else is the Harry Potter movies. She's Moaning Myrtle.