ViewGuide

Created May 10, 2012 10:20AM PST • Edited Sep 19, 2023 04:14PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Barely OK 2.0

   The Iron Lady? More like the Rusty Lady. Meryl Streep’s uncanny performance as Margaret Thatcher doesn’t redeem this disjointed, disrespectful and disappointing biopic.

   The Iron Lady focuses on Baroness Thatcher’s dotage, complete with dementia induced hallucinations. It achieves some power in flashbacks to Thatcher’s childhood, to her start in political life and to her apotheosis as Prime Minister. The best of these are captured in the upbeat trailer. The movie itself is a downer, and a convoluted one at that.

   It seems to exist as a platform for the incomparable Meryl Streep to essay a woman who should be a hero to all women, while being careful not to credit her accomplishments any more than necessary.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   All hail Meryl Streep. She’s managed to maintain her Hollywood halo while essaying a Left Wing boogyman, er boogywoman. Now that’s some mighty fine acting.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars OK 2.5

10. Film

    Pretty Bad 1.5

11. Direction Bad 1.0

12. Play Pretty Bad 1.5

13. Music OK 2.5

14. Visuals OK 2.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.2

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

19. Rudeness Polite 1.5

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    The movie opens with an elderly Baroness Thatcher going unrecognized while shopping at a neighborhood store. Nor does she have any security attending to her. Really? Perhaps the filmmakers also have dementia.

    rFactor issues aside, I was struck by Thatcher’s middle-class, small business roots, which seem to have spawned her American-like conviction in the power of the individual. Of course, that ran afoul of traditional British classism on the Right and grievance politics on the Left. No wonder she found common cause with Ronald Reagan. (BTW, her relationship with Reagan is all but ignored in this fatuous movie.)

    For a brief but well-rounded appreciation of Margaret Thatcher, read Conrad Black’s An Iron Lady Vindicated. He gets it just right by stating “It annoyed feminists that she was such a traditionalist, and weak men that she was a strong woman.”

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.7

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0