★★★
Here's a wickedly funny movie that you don't have to be British to appreciate. Set in the small English country parish of Little Wallop, Keeping Mum tells the story of a priest named Walter Goodfellow (Rowan Atkinson) who is so preoccupied with writing the perfect sermon, that he doesn't realize his wife Gloria (Kristin Scott Thomas) is on the verge of having an affair with her golf instructor Lance (Patrick Swayze) and that his seventeen year old daughter is consistently going a number of inappropriate relationships with unsuitable boyfriends and his son is terrified to go to school. This continues until the arrival of a nanny whose supposed name is Grace Hawkins (Maggie Smith). Almost instantaneously Grace becomes a part of the family as she starts tending to their needs and removing those causing problems.
This picture is a black comedy which insists on taking a slightly sinister approach that is enormously refreshing. It doesn't rely on gross out gags and poorly developed characters. Instead it focuses on very sincere actors giving very sincere performances all of them are perfect in their particular roles. Rowan Atkinson has always had a talent for playing massively inept individuals with a certain charm while Patrick Swayze gives, in my opinion, his best performance. He's so sleazy in this picture that you get the feeling that if you touched him you'd catch some sort of disease that there is no diagnosis or cure for. The true star of the film though is Maggie Smith. She gives a darker rather more sinister version of Mary Poppins. Grace is extremely kind-hearted but is not above bashing someone's head in with a frying pan if it suits her.
The violence and nudity in the film is under control so there is no reason to not enjoy the movie.
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