Rent The Miracle Club (2023)

The Miracle Club review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

There’s an almost admirable level of passivity to how The Miracle Club conducts itself. It assembles together a host of accomplished actresses and places them in a mildly meaningful dose of comedy-drama fit for middle-aged women. It’s the type of film where the drama comes standard, and the comedy falls out of their mouths at just the right time for a mild break from the somber melodrama and tragedy.

The film follows three working-class women of Dublin drawn together through music and similar plights. Lily Fox (Maggie Smith) is seeking to escape from the doldrums of being an elder looked down upon. Chrissie Ahearn (Laura Linney) is a mother hoping her husband can take more charge of taking care of her kid. Eileen Dunne (Kathy Bates) is a mother of many more kids who hopes her husband can pick up even more slack. There’s more to them than that, but the gist is that they’re singers who could use a break and find just that when they venture on a pilgrimage to Lourdes in France.

The entire film is about disillusionment with everything you’ve come to believe. When the three women arrive in Lourdes, they are informed by their guide, Father Dermot Byrne (Mark O'Halloran), that the place they are visiting is one of miracles. Perhaps their steps within the sacred waters of this holy place will help cure them of their problems. But that is not the case, and the women soon find themselves disheartened and hopeless. Only through their blunt conversations and earnest sympathies can they find more to live for in each other than placing all their dreams in the hands of spirituality.

This light dose of middle-aged drama is thankfully treated much more sweetly sincerely than uproariously absurdly. It’d be so easy for a film like this to fly off the rails with the women having some road trip hijinks or a goofy vacation romance. Thankfully, the film never settles on that level of humor, where the smiles and laughs seem to pop up at just the right time. She dignifiedly uses Maggie Smith’s penchant for having an acid tongue to be more honestly critical than mean-spiritedly bold. Laura Linney never bites back too much, and her frustrations are surprisingly balanced to the point where she more or less becomes the younger voice of reason. Kathy Bates puts on a subtle performance that’s enough to make the audience care for her when fears of cancer creep up on her.

While The Miracle Club isn’t exactly a miracle of the middle-aged lady dramedy, it’s suitable enough for passable Sunday afternoon viewing. For the older folks who have delighted in the long careers of Smith and Bates, they exude a decent amount of charm in this film, given that these are roles they practically walkthrough. The good news is that they give this lackluster script just enough oomph to be an okay dose of elder drama that is light and charming, having all the allure of a low-sugar snack. It’s fine for a mild nosh; just don’t expect to get much more out of it than that.