R | 1h 40m | Comedy, Drama | 2026
For now, here’s Sir Ian McKellen in “The Christophers.”
‘The Christophers’
Prolific filmmaker and master storyteller Steven Soderbergh can work successfully within a wide range of styles and genres: from “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” “Erin Brockovich,” “Magic Mike,” the “Ocean’s” series, to “Black Bag.” One can never be sure what sort of hat he’s going to wear next.He follows up suave spy flick “Black Bag” with “The Christophers;” a skeptical, rather cynical, London-based comedy-drama about one Julian Sklar (McKellen), a former giant of the British art scene.
While the fictitious Sklar’s real-life contemporaries, such as Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, and Lucian Freud retained their creative relevance up until their deaths, Sklar’s popularity peaked in the 1990s, then fell off. Now, he’s got a secondary career as an acerbic, Simon Cowell-like celebrity-critic, on a 1990s television art show called “Art Fight,” that’s fading in the rearview mirror.
The Heirs Abhorrent
Meanwhile, Julian’s bungling, grasping offspring, Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Gunning) whom he hilariously refers to as the “heirs abhorrent,” are eager to get their greedy paws on some cold, hard inheritance. This would be in the form of a series of unfinished portraits entitled “The Christophers,” that are wasting away in his classically artist-hoarder Bloomsbury townhouse attic. They’d be worth millions but they represent a painful time in Sklar’s life, so he has no intention of ever finishing them.But maybe, if he won’t finish them—someone else could? Like, illegally? Turns out, the amazingly untalented Sallie has a friend, Lori Butler (Michaela Coel) with whom she attended art school. Lori now does restoration and has a rare talent for mimicking other painters’ styles.
Barnaby and Sallie recruit Lori to ostensibly be their dad’s new assistant, when, in fact, the plan is for her get her hands on the remnants of ‘The Christophers’—and forge them to completion.
Lori also has some personal history with Sklar herself, which Sklar, wafting about in his vast cloud of self-involvement, has long since forgotten. Or has he? Much subtle subterfuge and plotting goes on.
Performances
The screenplay is quite wordy and has McKellen often sounding more Shakespearian-thespian-ish rather than Hollywood-movie-actor-ish. But, being as he is, a Brit-thespian-royalty-emeritus, he lip-smacks all the dialogue and conjures up a delightful egocentric foppish, old art coot. He relishes such observations as—while sashaying around in a dressing gown under which he’s bare-naked—“Weinstein ruined the bathrobe for the rest of us!”
Coel’s Sphinx-like Lori is, however, a worthy opponent. While the elder Sklar blusters, guilt-trips, and threatens, she’s coolly inscrutable and watchful. It’s a delicious, complicated battle of wills as each repeatedly gains the upper hand only to lose it again.
“The Christophers” is an artfully contrived, high-brow art drama that often entertains but never really presents life lessons one can apply to one’s own existence, other than, perhaps—don’t be an heir abhorrent. it’ll be an ideal choice for film clubs to pick apart, because, like fine paintings, the film reveals many layers.
