“She’s 23 — a dried-up husk of a woman,” Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston) snipes to her husband (Damian Lewis) early in “Fackham Hall.” The subject of her harangue is her bookish, unmarried daughter, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie), who, in a button to the joke, is shown to be seated, unbothered, beside her.
Such is the comic cadence of “Fackham Hall,” a featherweight paean to the British period drama that seesaws between puerile and genuinely funny. Sending up costumey, upstairs-downstairs tropes, the movie seldom lets five seconds pass without a wisecrack, pratfall or sight gag, sometimes all three stacked on top of each other.
Amid this comic congestion, the plot is almost beside the point. It cannonballs into motion once Rose meets cute with Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe), a charming rogue who’s hired as Fackham’s new hallboy. Too bad Lady Davenport is counting on Rose to wed her slimy first cousin, Archibald (Tom Felton), to ensure her side of the family maintains a claim to the estate. The marriage brokerage gets jumbled up with a murder mystery after a key aristocrat turns up impaled by a paper knife.
Directed by Jim O’Hanlon, “Fackham Hall” is enlivened by its cast of actors, who ride the waves of wordplay with a game commitment to the bit. But more than any dialogue, the visual flourishes take the cake: A special Gainsborough-hat tip to the merry wag who came up with the idea to tack a “Trainspotting” dorm poster in the servants’ quarters.
Fackham Hall Rated R for all manners of crudeness. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters.
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