''Misbehaviour'' is a 2020 British

comedy-drama Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...

film directed by

Philippa Lowthorpe Philippa Lowthorpe (born 27 December 1961) is an English film and television director. She was awarded the Deluxe Director Award at the WFTV Film and Television Awards for the miniseries '' Three Girls''. She recently directed episodes of the ...

, from a screenplay by

Gaby Chiappe Gaby Chiappe (born c. 1964) is a British screenwriter, known for her original works: television show The Level (TV series), ''The Level'', and the films ''Their Finest'' and Misbehaviour (film), ''Misbehaviour''. Prior to developing these, she wor ...

and

Rebecca Frayn Rebecca Frayn is an English documentary film maker, screenwriter, novelist and actress. Career Rebecca Frayn is a film maker and screen writer. She has directed a wide variety of quirky documentary essays for the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV on su ...

, from a story by Frayn. The film stars

Keira Knightley Keira Christina Righton (; née Knightley, born 26 March 1985) is an English actress. Known for her work in both independent films and blockbusters, particularly period dramas, she has received several accolades, including nominations for ...

Gugu Mbatha-Raw Gugulethu Sophia Mbatha-Raw (; born 21 April 1983) is a British actress who is known for her performances on stage and screen. In 2017 she was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama ...

Jessie Buckley Jessie Buckley (born 28 December 1989) is an Irish actress and singer. The recipient of a Laurence Olivier Award, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award and three BAFTA Awards, she was listed at number 38 on ''The Irish Times'' list of ...

Keeley Hawes Claire Julia Hawes (born 10 February 1976), known professionally as Keeley Hawes, is an English actress. After beginning her career in a number of literary adaptations, including ''Our Mutual Friend'' (1998) and ''Tipping the Velvet'' (2002), Haw ...

Phyllis Logan Phyllis Logan (born 11 January 1956) is a Scottish actress, known for playing Lady Jane Felsham in ''Lovejoy'' (1986–1993) and Mrs Hughes (later Carson) in ''Downton Abbey'' (2010–2015). She won the BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer f ...

Lesley Manville Lesley Ann Manville (born 12 March 1956) is an English actress known for her frequent collaborations with Mike Leigh, appearing in the films ''Grown-Ups'' (1980), '' High Hopes'' (1988), '' Secrets & Lies'' (1996), ''Topsy-Turvy'' (1999), '' A ...

Rhys Ifans Rhys Ifans (; born Rhys Owain Evans; 22 July 1967) is a Welsh actor and musician. He was the frontman of Welsh rock music bands the Peth and Super Furry Animals. As an actor, he is best known for his roles in ''Notting Hill'' (1999), ''Kevin & ...

and

Greg Kinnear Gregory Buck Kinnear (born June 17, 1963) is an American actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in ''As Good as It Gets'' (1997). Kinnear has appeared in many popular films, including ''Sabrina'' (199 ...

. ''Misbehaviour'' was released in the United Kingdom on 13 March 2020 by

Pathé Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French people, French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest ...

's distribution partner

20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Dis ...

. It is the final film from Pathé UK to be released under the 20th Century Fox name.

Premise

The 1970 Miss World competition took place in London, hosted by the American comedian

Bob Hope Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was a British-American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer and dancer. With a career that spanned nearly 80 years, Hope appeared in more than 70 short and feature films, with 5 ...

. At that time Miss World was the most-watched TV show in the world with over 100 million viewers. Arguing that beauty competitions

objectify In social philosophy, objectification is the act of treating a person, as an object or a thing. It is part of dehumanization, the act of disavowing the humanity of others. Sexual objectification, the act of treating a person as a mere object of sex ...

women, the newly formed

women's liberation movement The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which effected great ...

achieved overnight fame by invading the stage and disrupting the live broadcast of the competition. When the show resumed, the result caused uproar: the winner was not the Swedish favourite but Miss Grenada, the second (after

Carole Crawford Carole Joan Crawford (born 13 February 1943) is a Jamaican model and beauty queen who won the Miss World contest in 1963, She was also the first winning delegate from both Jamaica and the Caribbean to have won Miss World. At the time of her ...

of Jamaica) black woman to be crowned Miss World.

Cast

Production

The film was announced in October 2018, with

and

set to star.

was set to direct. In November 2018,

and

had joined the cast of the film. In September 2018 Collet Collins joined the cast, and in January 2019

Suki Waterhouse Alice Suki Waterhouse (born 5 January 1992) is an English model, actress and singer. She began a career in modelling at the age of 16, and she would go on to model for several major fashion labels. Her first feature film as an actress was a min ...

and Clara Rosager joined.

Filming

Principal photography began in November 2018. Filming in the

Crofton Park Crofton Park is a mainly residential suburb and electoral ward in the London Borough of Lewisham. It is the original site of the former agricultural hamlet of Brockley. It is located south east of Charing Cross, and is south of Brockley and ...

area of

Lewisham Lewisham () is an area of southeast London, England, south of Charing Cross. It is the principal area of the London Borough of Lewisham, and was within the Historic counties of England, historic county of Kent until 1889. It is identified i ...

in southeast London occurred in early January 2019.

Release

The film was released in the United Kingdom on 13 March 2020. Shout Studios was named as the distributor in the United States. Due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, the film's theatrical release was cut short, and the film was released early to video on demand in the United Kingdom on 15 April. The movie was released on DVD in the United Kingdom by

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc., doing business as Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, is the home entertainment distribution arm of The Walt Disney Company. The division handles the distribution of Disney's films, television series, an ...

on 7 September 2020. As of 2021, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment was re-printing under licence from

. The film was inspired by an edition of the BBC Radio 4 series '' The Reunion'', broadcast in September 2010.

Reception

Box office

''Misbehaviour'' grossed £347,643 in its opening weekend in the United Kingdom and a total of £455,088 locally and $2,024,073 worldwide.

Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews from critics, with an average rating of . The site's critics consensus reads: "''Misbehaviour''s overall arc will be familiar to fans of feelgood British cinema – and so will the way it triumphs over formula to tell a thoroughly crowd-pleasing story." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, it has a score of 62, based on reviews from 15 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews."

Richard Roeper Richard E. Roeper (born October 17, 1959) is an American columnist and film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times''. He co-hosted the television series '' At the Movies'' with Roger Ebert from 2000 to 2008, serving as the late Gene Siskel's success ...

wrote, "Following the playbook of '' 'The Full Monty'',' '''

Calendar Girls ''Calendar Girls'' is a 2003 British comedy film directed by Nigel Cole. Produced by Touchstone Pictures, it features a screenplay by Tim Firth and Juliette Towhidi, based on a true story of a group of middle-aged Yorkshire women who produced ...

'',' '''

Military Wives The Military Wives Choirs is a registered charity and network of 75 choirs in British military bases across the UK and overseas, bringing women in the military community closer together through singing. With over 2,200 members, the MWC network ...

'',' et al., Misbehaviour''' achieves just the right mix of farcical humor, dry wit and the obligatory dramatic moments when the light banter and sight gags give way to Poignant Confrontations reminding us there are serious undertones to this breezy romp." Sheila O'Malley of RogerEbert.com of the film gave a mixed review. Though O'Malley praised screenwriters

and

for focusing on the intersecting stories of both the protesters and pageant competitors, she noted "it's treated as a given that pageants are sexist and gross, etthe scenes of pageant rehearsals plus the camaraderie of the contestants tells a different story. The separate storyline structure runs into trouble because these ideas don't have a chance to develop or take root."

References

External links

* * {{Philippa Lowthorpe 2020 films British comedy-drama films Left Bank Pictures films Pathé films BBC Film films 20th Century Fox films Films about beauty pageants Films set in the 1970s Films set in 1970 British films based on actual events Miss World 1970 2020 comedy-drama films Films shot in London British female buddy films 2020s feminist films 2020s female buddy films 2020s English-language films Films directed by Philippa Lowthorpe 2020s British films 2020s French films