Jennifer Fallon - the Official Site

In 1954, The Belles of St Trinians made its debut; a raunchy comedy based around the antics of the dysfunctional English Boarding School for girls, St Trinian’s, whose characters were first introduced by artist Ronald Searle in the 1930s. The franchise was so successful it spawned a number of sequels: Blue Murder at St. Trinian's (1957), The Pure Hell of St. Trinian's (1960) The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery (1966) and the abysmal The Wildcats of St. Trinian's (1980).

In Movieland, however, an abysmal sequel isn’t enough to keep a good (or even middling) franchise down, and thus we meet the St Trinians class of 2007, where the enterprising misfits are brewing bootleg liquor, using the cute male art teacher as a model in their live art classes and engaging in shameless cheating when competing against other schools at hockey.

The school Headmistress, Miss Camilla Fritton (Rupert Everett in drag) has problems aplenty. The bank is foreclosing, her brother Carnaby (also Rupert Everett – not in drag) wants to sell up and cash in the real estate, and a new, gung-ho Minister for Education (Colin Firth) — who also happens to be Camilla’s ex-love from their university days — wants to close the school down. Got that?

There are a score of school girls in there too, ranging from cute, geeky, genius 10-year old twins to the dressed-like-porn-stars senior girls, whose uniforms are the stuff of male fantasy the world over. The plot, such as it is, involves a convoluted plan to steal Vermeer’s “Girl with the Pearl Earring” from the National Gallery in London so they can sell it to Caranby Fritton, rip him off for the money needed to pay the bank. While they’re at it, they need to win the School Challenge TV show to prove St Trinian’s is one of the better academic schools in Britain, not the worst. They come up with an absurd plot (al la The Italian Job) which involves explosions, sewer tunnels and, among other things, a dance through a laser field like Catherine Zeta Jones. My favourite, however, was the perfectly pointless stunt using ropes  to rappel above the open hall where the School Challenge TV final is taking place to get from side one of the gallery to the other (because, well, it’s a gallery and it goes all the way around the hall...)

Rupert Everett does a fine job in his twin roles of Miss Fritton and Carnaby. Colin Firth looked as if he’d rather be anywhere else, probably because of the endless references (both visual and otherwise) to Mr Darcy. (Even the dog is called Mr Darcy). Lena Headey, currently kicking butt on TV in the Sarah Connor Chronicles, is unrecognisable as the frumpy English Teacher, Miss Dickenson and there is a fairly pointless cameo by Mischa Barton who is on the screen for such a short time, you wonder how she got her name in the credits.

The film does raise a laugh in a few places, and no-one will ever accuse it of not being true to its very campy source material, but the bottom line is, St Trinian's is more than a little contrived, ultimately silly, and despite its attempts to  garner laughs by spoofing other movies, just a little bit uncomfortable to watch. Not that such a verdict bothers the movie-going public. St Trinian’s 2 is already in pre-production and set for release in 2009. Oh dear.