“The Iron Lady” is a little rusty.  It’s not Meryl Streep’s fault whose portrayal of the remarkable Margaret Thatcher was worthy of the Reagan-era British Prime Minister.  It’s almost trite to say that Streep is the best actress of her generation, but if it’s true it ain’t trite and certainly is not inaccurate.  Streep deserves a nomination for her performance because her capture of the Iron Lady is fabulous.  Will she win the Oscar?  Probably not because the movie is not very good.

Let’s be fair; the movie is bad and not interesting.  The costumes are fantastic and the editing is skilled but the script and the story is so basic and biographical that the show was boring.  Please don’t bore me.  I didn’t walk out of the theatre because I watched a screener (DVD) at my office which is not the ideal setting (no popcorn) but during the “nomination season” one must resort to screeners in order to keep up with the huge influx of movies provided by studios anxious to sell their movies to the various academies and critics.

How good was Streep?  Fantastic, incredible, astonishing, but I need some entertainment.  I know that Meryl Streep is the Queen of the Screen, but Larry H. is in it for himself and demands some joy and escape.  That does not include a methodical description of a historically significant twentieth century figure that should have been shown to college history students.

I watch movies for fun and to be entertained, not to receive a lecture even though I admit that the education process in a well-done movie can be provocative and stimulating and often entertaining.  Who is to blame?  That’s easy; Phyllida “Mama Mia” Lloyd who as director must have had an easy time in convincing Mrs. Streep to play Thatcher but forgot the audience.  Lloyd was born in 1957 in Bristol, England, so she grew up watching the Iron Lady become one of the most notable and powerful women in the history of the world.

That would be an overwhelming influence on the young, impressionable Phyllida.  She probably has been dreaming of the time that she could convince her buddy Meryl Streep to play her hero Margaret Thatcher.  I’m just speculating. but the texture and themes of the movie appeared to be the result of hero-worship rather than art and entertainment.  I repeat:  it is not Streep’s fault but somebody owes me 105 minutes of my life.  Just kidding; I like watching bad movies – it gives me something to write about and I love to whine.  Rock ‘n Roll.