Made me laugh for all the wrong reasons: Allelujah reviewed

Allelujah, based on the stage play by Alan Bennett, is set in a geriatric ward in a Yorkshire hospital and has a stellar cast: Jennifer Saunders, Derek Jacobi, David Bradley, Julia McKenzie, Lorraine Ashbourne, Dame Judi Dench – but not Dame Maggie Smith, inexplicably. Maybe she missed the call. It’s directed by Richard Eyre and produced by Nicholas Hytner, among others, so it has all the credentials you could wish for and yet, and yet, and yet. It’s weirdly lifeless and perfunctory and introduces a tonal shift at the end that belongs to a different film. That part did make me laugh but for all the wrong reasons, alas.

The hospital is the Bethlehem, known as ‘the Beth’, which is old and Victorian. It is beloved by the local community but threatened with closure by Whitehall bean-counters. It has wards named after famous singers. Mostly, we are on the Shirley Bassey ward although there is a Dusty Springfield ward too. I kept waiting for the comic potential to be exploited – ‘Ralph has died on Shirley Bassey!’; ‘What’s Eric doing in Dusty Springfield?’ – but this film has a habit of not seeing anything through. The ward’s doctor is Dr Valentine (Bally Gill), who is fantastically saintly, and says in voiceover at the outset: ‘I love old people.’ What, all old people? What about Josef Schuetz, who was recently convicted of Nazi crimes at the age of 101? I found it hard to believe that Bennett could be so banal but then clocked that the screenplay is by Heidi Thomas of Call the Midwife fame. I have nothing against Call the Midwife, as I like a homily as much as the next person, but if you’re going to do Alan Bennett, don’t meddle with Alan Bennett. Or the rhythm of his language.