Married couples going at each other has been a reliable source of laughs for as long as I can remember.  The Roepers on Three’s Company.  The Bundys on Married with Children.  The Barones on Everyone Loves Raymond.  When you put two actors who can deliver zingers with deadly precision together, it’s comedic gold.  Which is probably what interested Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman in The Roses, who play the eponymous warring couple in addition to being executive producers.  They knew how much fun they would have with this material, and that we’d enjoy watching them tear each other to shreds.  They were right.

It was back in 2001 that Renée Zellweger first appeared in Bridget Jones’ Diary.  Thankfully, both return in fine form Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, the fourth entry in what has become a franchise.  Both Zellweger and her character are still reliable sources of laughs as they ever were.  Hugh Grant’s Daniel Cleaver is still a relentless Lothario, but is slowed by heart issues.  Alas, Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy has passed on prior to this sequel, and appears only as an apparition that Bridget can see.  Although the movie is funny, Mark’s death gives this entry a melancholy tone, where the passage of time and the loss of a loved one grounds things more than a typical romantic comedy.

Describing Wicked Little Letters as a throwback feels odd.  I remember when British Period Comedies would regularly appear in theaters and be seen by what would politely describe as “senior audiences” in significant numbers.  The Full Monty was a Best Picture nominee back in 1997.  (Has it already been twenty-five years since it came out?)  Helen Mirren and Judy Dench once defined this genre, but haven’t been in anything like it in years.  Many things have conspired against this once dependable genre: COVID, streaming and changing audience tastes being primary among them.  Throwback or not, the movie is incredibly funny and will delight audiences who seek it out, either in theaters or on streaming.

Otto (Tom Hanks) is a Grump.  That much is clear from the movie’s opening scene.  First he argues with a sales associate who wants to help him cut the rope he wishes to purchase.  Then he argues with the checkout clerk who says he must pay for two yards of rope when he only needs five feet.  It’s not that Otto can’t afford to pay the extra thirty-odd cents, he doesn’t want to pay for what he doesn’t need.  When the clerk explains that the computer register can only ring him up for a per yard purchase, he asks, “What computer can’t do math?”  Otto’s argument  ultimately amounts to nothing, but he’s the sort of person who’s always ready to argue something on principle.  Even though what he’s arguing about–five feet of rope, is what he intends to use to kill himself.