Alan Bennett's award-winning play is, for the most part, successfully transferred to the screen by Hytner, previously best known as a director for The Madness of King George: that is to say, it rarely feels stagebound until the postscript, by which stage the shift in tone seems natural.Eight boys at a public school in '80s Yorkshire are being coached towards Oxbridge, and the headmaster, a dunce masquerading as a martinet, decides that their chances need to be beefed up by more rigorous training than that provided by Richard Griffiths's poesying blimp (basically, his Uncle Monty reworked), whose 'general studies' lessons indulge the boys' playing out of musical numbers and old movie scenes. So, in comes a young new recruit to the staff, who proceeds to tell the boys at once that competence alone will not make them stand out: tactics are called for, from playing devil's advocate to outright lying.
It's not reality by a long chalk: almost every character in turn is employed as a mouthpiece for whatever quip or observation Bennett wants to chuck our way, which frequently jars with most of them, after all, being just teenagers. Griffiths's tentative molestation of his wards is also treated rather too lightly for comfort, as if it were just an endearing foible. But there's no denying the wit at work: it's frequently very funny and also comes with an understated, unsettling undercurrent concerning what it takes to succeed in a class-centred society.
7/10
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