MOVIE REVIEW

The second coming of England's Ealing Studios is weirdly clueless.

By Robert Abele, Special to The Times

It would be wonderful to report that the British farce with Maggie Smith as a sweetly homicidal housekeeper and Rowan Atkinson as a bumbling vicar was the second coming of England's Ealing Studios, which produced the hilariously impolite murder comedies "The Ladykillers" and "Kind Hearts and Coronets." "Keeping Mum," however, is a specimen for the morgue.

The naughty idea is that the dysfunctional Goodfellow family in the parish of Little Wallop — unhappy wife/mother (Kristin Scott Thomas), oblivious father (Atkinson), promiscuous daughter (Tamsin Egerton) and bully-magnet son (Toby Parkes) — are going to see their lives change once Smith brings her malevolent Mary Poppins act to town. But unless your idea of side-splitting yuks is the killing of a yapping pooch, or Patrick Swayze (as Thomas' golf instructor paramour) saying or doing anything, you should stay away from director/co-screenwriter Niall Johnson's stale tea cake of a movie. (The other writer is Pulitzer winner Richard Russo.)

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The tamping down of Smith's mischievous charms to overemphasize boring feel-goodness is one thing. But how does one give a gifted physical comedian such as Atkinson a bit in which he's the worst goalie in the world and get no laughs? Or conversely, have the rubbery-faced actor quote from the Song of Solomon as foreplay for rekindling romance with his wife — "let thy breasts be as clusters on the vine" and all that — and expect it to be serious? Where Ealing comedies used to have full command of irony, "Keeping Mum" is weirdly clueless.

'Keeping Mum'

MPAA rating: R for language and some sexual content and nudity

A ThinkFilm release. Director Niall Johnson. Screenplay Richard Russo, Johnson. Original story Johnson. Producers Julia Palau, Matthew Payne. Director of photography Gavin Finney. Editor Robin Sales. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

In selected theaters.