Take the life of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and add iron actress Meryl Streep playing her and you’d think this biopic would be pure gold, Oscar gold. It’s a shame that the script wasn’t ironed out before they rolled camera. It was an almost unwatchable film.

It’s painful to write that. Meryl Streep is one of the greatest, if not the greatest American film actresses of all time, and clearly this is a role she could have torn to pieces. We get glimpses of this when she is in full Thatcher mode at the height of the Prime Minister’s power and her subsequent fall from grace. Streep is a genius of nuance and broadcasts so perceptively every thought and emotion, almost dancing across her face, that voice over is almost wasted on her performances. Sadly the overuse of flashbacks in this movie is a waste too. Over 50% takes place with Streep portraying an aging Margaret Thatcher, delusional, at the end of her life and flashing back and forth irractically to snippets of the real meat of the story– how this woman became an historical icon. Each time we cut to aging Thatcher, the story grinds to a halt, the audience groans. This is not the move we paid $16.00 to see. 

Thatchers life was beyond impressive, often dividing the country she led. From humble beginnings, a grocer’s daughter whose public service as a mayor sowed the political seeds for whom she was to become. Accepted at Oxford, she first went on to become a chemist and then a barrister before she won her first election as a Member of Parliament (MP). Little to none of this is covered in the movie with a running time of 1:45.   

Margaret Thatcher was the first and only woman to date to be elected as Prime Minister of Great Britain. To be elected three times is remarkable. She served 11 years, through IRA bombings, through trade union uprisings, racial tension, the last decade of the Cold War, recession and the Falklands War. All of this is quickly trivialized in the movie, plot points to be brushed over with period footage and dialoge bites.  Instead the focus is stolen by hallucinatory, current day scenes with her husband (Jim Broadbent) who died 6 years earlier as she contemplates her life and what she had to sacrifice to attain the heights she did. Perhaps meant to be an emotional thru-line for the story, it falls flat.    

The script, written by Abi Morgan, a British playwright and TV movie writer, tips her hand on her inexperience with the big screen. The script is disjointed, repetitive, loaded with montages and all artifice… better suited for the stage than film. Director, Phyllida Lloyd, British theatre and opera director (who also directed Streep inMamma Mia!, a dud in this reviewers mind as well) trips over the script problems time and time again, and directs Streep in one of her strongest yet weakest performance through no fault of Streep’s own, except that perhaps she read the script and still signed on to do it. Streep is always stunning, and here gives a mighty performance but it’s pearls before swines. 

The biopic has an air of pompousness. All of these events took place thirty years ago. I presume they want audiences outside of the UK, yet there is no use of any kind of on-screen graphics to let us know whom these historical figureheads and fervent opponents, of which Thatcher had many, were. Graphics would have been nice to show that it was Alexander Haig, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, in the scene when he meets Thatcher to discuss the Falklands. Members of staff and parliament are unnamed. The music felt pompous too, with soundtrack of opera and classical music to add drama to scenes where none existed, or emotion when none was built. 

Perhaps the two most offputting moments in the film were 1.)  a set up in the beginning as Thatcher gets her political makeover and refuses to give up her double strand pearls she lovingly nicknames “The Twins” after her own twin children, yet in later scenes she is seen wearing a single strand, and 2.) in another hallucinatory scene with ghost husband, he breaks the “rules” and physically interacts with her world by adding seltzer to her whiskey. Sloppy. A recurring theme in the movie.    

Yes, against all odds, Streep gives a stunning performance. The question is will voters be able to overlook the failures of the movie itself to give her the Oscar? I think not. 

To see the trailer, watch below: