Director: Chris Columbus
Starring: Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie, Ben Kingsley, David Tennant, Jonathan Pryce, Naomie Ackie, Daniel Mays, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Richard E. Grant 
Certificate: 12A
Run Time: 118 mins

The Thursday Murder Club is an adaptation of Richard Osman’s debut 2020 murder mystery novel, which has since spawned a successful series. It followed a group of pensioners who set about solving the mystery of the murder of a local property development from the comfort of their luxurious retirement village. This adaptation (which heads straight to Netflix after a limited release) has a star-studded cast, with Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Celia Imrie and Ben Kingsley as the central quartet. It’s directed by Chris Columbus, who has a great track record with comedies with films such as Home Alone and Mrs Doubtfire, and of course, he directed the first two Harry Potter films. With a high-calibre cast and crew, this sounds like it could be a promising start to the series.

Sadly, The Thursday Murder Club is an unmitigated disaster. Other than being handsomely shot and a couple of actors trying to make the most of a poor script, there’s little fun to be found here. The two biggest problems are Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote’s script and the film’s tone. Osman’s wit is of a certain brand, and there were chuckles to be had in the book, but the script here is wooden and none of the jokes land. There’s also zero suspense and the film moves at a glacial pace, often being rather boring – that’s quite an achievement considering the star-studded cast. The tone is also completely off, perhaps because Columbus is an American director and hasn’t fully understood the book that’s steeped in British humour.

There’s a surprising real mixed bag of performances, but you can only do what you can do with such a shoddy script. Helen Mirren and Ben Kingsley fare the best out of the central quartet, but both play their roles very straight. While Celia Imrie’s a fine actress, her retired nurse Joyce lacks all the sweetness and naivety the character has in the book. And then there’s Pierce Brosnan, who’s Ron Ritchie is meant to have a Cockney accent but Lord knows where the character hails from with Brosnan’s woeful performance.

Of the supporting cast, Naomie Ackie and Daniel Mays are toe-curlingly bad as the two police officers who are tasked with investigating the case, with all their comedic attempts falling flat. David Tennant, Richard E. Grant and Henry Lloyd Hughes are also surprisingly awful in their roles – Tennant as the villainous retirement village co-owner, Grant as a gangster-like crime boss with laughable tattoos and Hughes as an inauthentic Polish maintenance man.

While Thomas Newman’s score is certainly instantly noticeable as his, it aggressively doesn’t fit in with the film’s tone and isn’t memorable in the slightest. The film is handsomely shot by Don Burgess, who does a great job of establishing the grandiose retirement village’s presence.

It’s a real shame The Thursday Murder Club is so poor considering the talent involved. It completely bellyflops tonally and Columbus and his crew haven’t understood the essence of Osman’s novel. That even the veteran cast can’t elevate proceedings demonstrates this adapation is doomed. It wouldn’t surprise me if the film performed well enough to justify a sequel – in many ways, it feels like a television series in its execution in how it’s largely confined to one location and lacks a cinematic sheen. But The Thursday Murder Club just goes to show that a top-tier cast and crew isn’t a guarantee of a film’s quality.