Rent The Last of the Blonde Bombshells (2000)

Stomping Stuff - The Last of the Blonde Bombshells review by CH

Undemanding. The adjective is widely taken to be pejorative. This need not be the case. As such, Alan Plater's film makes for a diverting entertainment. Widowed, well-heeled Judi Dench chances upon an old flame (Ian Holm), something of a reprobate, who, beneath a female wig and dress, had been a bed-hopping drummer in her otherwise all-female jazz group which played in clubs during the war in something of an Ivy Benson style.

After now busking successfully in her grief with a young man (coins filling his guitar case), her children's disapproval grows - all the more so as that renewed outing for her saxophone brings her and Holm the idea of reuniting the wartime group for a gig at her grandaughter's (Millie Findlay) school (where they will take the stage to more acclaim than the punkish thrashers who precede them).

To get that far she and the spivish Holm travel about in a quest to prevail upon the band to take up their instruments again (he knows a car dealer who, at one point, loans him an E-type to her disapproval). Clues bring them to a Scottish castle and a gaol (where Billie Whitelaw is bailed out) while Joan Sims's end-of-Hastings-pier piano turn contrasts with June Whitfield's marching in the Salvation Army. As these and others agree to take part with varying degess of enthusiasm and reluctance (Cleo Laine and Leslie Caron were also members), things progress from these diverse, well-filmed locations to a sometimes fraught rehearsal room.

It is a sure thing that the performance turns out well - but will romance bloom again?

That's as maybe but, all the while, to good effect, that narrative is intercut by wartime scenes, bomb shelters and all, which find the band on fine form (an array of players as the then-young women). On and off the stage, this is a genially foot-tapping film which leaves one keen to see the later stage play in which Plater returned to the war itself to depict the band's origins.