It’s been quite a while since we last looked at the X-Factor Origins epic saga that was when the world’s worst singer was the subject of a couple of films this year, both of which had a slightly different idea about how to tell the story. Inbetween examining the french version and this, we’ve had meh over a few films and of course been wasting huge amounts of time playing various games, the most fun of which was had with destroying the demons of hell.

Given it’s been a while of course, and the fact I’m actually coming back to this now , will mean that there are more than likely going to be various gaps in what I remember to tell the truth. But regardless, we will look at the second film to come out this year about basically the singer that was meh. The thing being that back in the day, a rich woman who basically paid lots of money to do stuff and performed badly in front of a live audience who then died in a rather bad way.

Unlike the previous film Marguerite, this film is directly about Florence Foster Jenkins, and goes into what happened with her during the second world war and ultimately how she came to pass away.

Florence Foster Jenkins. Again. Still better than Aqua when they did Barbie Girl.

Once again as was with the previous review, there will be some spoilers, so if you want to know more then by all means, continue onwards. Otherwise catch the next edition of Match of the Day to see if this went into extra time. Or, given what’s been apparently happening between English and Russian supporters a day after the beginning of Euro 2016, maybe look up the casualty list to see how many will survive.

Well they do seem happier than the others….

So Florence Foster Jenkins then gives us a whole different cast, most of whom you will have seen from various other enterprises. Meryl Streep plays the titular character who believes that she has a wonderful voice to give to everyone and seems to single handedly keep half of New York going with her extremely generous nature.

Hugh Grant plays Jenkins’ sort-of husband (After looking this up, the two never actually married in real life, though the film seems to go with the fact they did marry) and manager. Then we have the guy from the Big Bang Theory, Simon Helberg who will be playing the piano a lot of the time while trying not to laugh at the level of singing ol’ Florence will expose to all. So the plot is going to follow more closely to the actual story of what happened, and therefore that’s why this time we see everything take place in New York in between the wars and and of course during the second world war.

Florence has been getting singing lessons from a famous person, who also liked to take her from behind at one weird point. Because everyone’s been humouring her, she then wants to sing at Carnegie Hall to help the troops, but of course, given how bad her singing has been, all who are with her will attempt to shield her from the world’s criticism, but they will of course only be able to do so much before she finds out. You know sh*t be going down afterwards.

There are also some extra story details which you didn’t actually expect to come in considering how the trailer showed so little other than the humour behind Meryl Streep singing badly. Florence sleeps alone and doesn’t do naughty because she suffers from Syphilis, so Hugh Grant tucks her in night after night, then goes to an apartment downtown where his girlfriend waits for him. So apparently Hugh is still able to get his freak on, so that’s all right then. So in that respect it seems both films were happy to show the husband was hanging around with another woman.

The closet we get to a sex scene in this. Even with “just done naughty face”

For the most part, all the cast give a decent performance throughout and therefore keeps you at the very least interested. As I was just writing about the other half, Hugh Grant actually gives a solid performance, and he’s lost none of his ease with comic scenes, one of which is most notable when Florence shows up at his apartment unannounced after he and Simon were dancing with various people, and his girlfriend had to hide in the wardrobe.

However, this is where the two characters portrayed between the french and the english based versions certainly change. Hugh also has some heartwarmingly touching scenes in which he gives Jenkins the (platonic) love she is so desperate for, and when he tries to shield her from the truth. Even so, I was never quite sure how to reconcile this side of his character with the double-life he leads without Jenkins’ knowledge. I mean, surely she’s not that naive? Or perhaps again, maybe it was due to the fact she was shielded from so much, that then she accepted reality as was until the very end.

What I didn’t expect, however, was to find myself sympathising with Florence, to the point where you don’t want her to face the crowd and think she failed. Simon Helberg is excellent as Jenkins’ much put-upon accompanist, and even has a few heart felt moments with Streep in his apartment, which is still bigger than everything in London in 2016.

I wonder if this is how she disguised herself…..

A good deal of credit should go to Streep here, because frankly it takes a lot of effort to constantly sing badly. Mind you she did manage it along with others in Mama Mia, and that was probably unintentionally bad. Alight, was being polite, Mama Mia was just a complete pile of sh*t and I’m glad I cannot say the same here. Here it was on purpose and unlike the french version, there was no sign her voice was ever going to get better. She also doesn’t bring some depth and brings across that she does actually care about people who spend time with her, even if they were just there under her employ.

All in all, this had a lot more comedy and didn’t go deep into the rabbit hole in terms of despair like the french version of the story and remarkably, shows a lot of heart at the end.

It was certainly the better of the two in terms of not leaving you with a hateful taste against everyone that took advantage of the tonally challenged rich singing lady. Of the two films, I would probably recommend this version over the french version, although that has several things going for it itself that even if you just watched the once, it would leave an impression for sure. So this year we had two films about not singing well and in essence dying when reality sets in.

For more like that, you just have to watch a series of the Voice or the X-Factor, except you only would be dying slowly inside regardless. I would take this film over that crap any day of the week and this got a lot more humanity to it too.