REVIEW: Downton Abbey: A New Era Gives New Meaning to “A New Era”
After five seasons and one features length film, fans are welcomed back to the world of Downton Abbey in the new film, Downton Abbey: A New Era. In A New Era, we find the prestigious Crawley family splitting up. Half of them are headed to the South of France to see the new Villa, mysteriously left to the Dowager Countess of Grantham (Maggie Smith) while the other half is staying at Downton to welcome a film cast and crew to their estate. Although divided, viewers watch as most of their favorite characters are faced with their own trials and tribulations as they navigate through the two overarching stories.
Unlike the series, where you have multiple episodes to tell a variety of different storylines at once, the multitude of stories are much harder to pull off in a film. Newcomer to the Downton family, Simon Curtis, took on the director’s hat for this film and did his best to try to balance all the stories, but at times it felt like there was too much going on at one time. Because of the length of time he was given to work with, some of the characters get pushed to the back while others take a more centerstage position. This may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on if you like the character or not. Either way, there isn’t enough time to fully tell flesh out their stories as well as the newcomers’ stories. Though, like most Downton entities, there are laughs, they are tearjerker moments, and there is a pretty fantastic scene towards the end that will leave you beaming.
Hugh Bonneville, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Kevin Doyle, Joanne Froggatt, Harry Hadden-Paton, Robert James-Collier, Allen Leech, Phyllis Logan, Elizabeth McGovern, Sophie McShera, Tuppence Middleton, Lesley Nicol, Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton, and Penelope Wilton all return in A New Era, but Dockery, Doyle, McGovern, James-Collier, and Bonneville are the standouts in this movie. Without giving away too much, each play interesting parts in the two stories and all give superb performances while doing it.
The original cast is joined in the new film by Hugh Dancy (Jack Barber), Laura Haddock (Myrna Dalgleish), Nathalie Baye (Madame Montmirail) and Dominic West (Guy Dexter). All four are nice additions to the Downton family, but its Dancy’s Barber and West’s Dexter that will leave the lasting impressions.
Downtown Abbey: A New Era certainly gives a new meaning to “A New Era” when all is said and done. Is it as good as past Downton content, maybe? I will leave that up to the hardcore fans to decide. But it does wrap up all the storylines in a nice, neat bow, though not a tight one. Unlike past Downton entities, this one left me with a number of unanswered questions.
Grade: A