Movie #3499 "DownAbbey The Grand Finale" (theatre) I loved this from beginning (recap) to the very end (a nostalgic look back with film footage from all those years of watching ) Disclaimer: I am a big fan, so I was watching it from that POV --- I have no idea if you never watched any of the shows , and just came in blindly to watch this film. I should think you wouldn't get much, because of all the baggage that came along through the years. Anyway, the opening music is way different from the usual opening for this show, and I didn't like it at first, but then I realized while watching the film that CHANGE was the main theme, and so I saw it as setting the tone nicely from the get-go. Change is inevitable and there are some sad, negative elements of it that are brought out in the film (Maggie is gone now, the house itself is due for a lot of work - leadership change, and downstairs crew is getting older and changing out) but change can lead to so many doors opening in the future --- hope, which is what we could use in this horrible political climate. From the beginning there's a nice, but very very quick recap to remind us where we left all the members of the family --- names go by quickly and we have to remember them. I wish they would have set the scene a tad more slowly as to where we were and the immediate conflict - because I kept getting the major house (Downton Abbey, which I don't remember them ever calling it that through the whole film) mixed up with their property in London (The Grantham London estate) - and then throw in discussions of Maggie Smith's place and well, houses can be confusing. And going from one place to another divides the downstairs (wait staff) quite a bit, too. Example of confusion - Mary and Sis walking in London street, and a woman comes by and asks them how Bertie and Henry are --- I gulp because I am trying to place those names, when the writer woman could have said, your husbands, Bertie and Henry. Help us out, Henry (Matthew Goode) was hardly in the previous movies..... and wasn't going to show up at all in this one due to schedule conflict and a knee operation. But it was a good thing he didn't because his absence afford an excellent conflict for Mary through the entire finale movie. Another example of confusion was with Sibby --- when Tom arrives we hardly see the woman he is with --- why not remind us if he is with Sibby, his daughter or his new wife.... just a little help. I need to stop before I say too much about the plot, but I want to give a resounding A+ to the very ending --- to me, the whole show was about the relationship between the Upstairs people and the Downstairs staff, and there were very few times that they shared screen time all together having a great time --- and they preserved that for us at the end in this finale. A nice neat bow wrapped around a very entertaining film. I'd give this a 4.5 out of 5. And highly recommend it!
"DOWNTON ABBEY: THE GRAND FINALE" theatre 2025 PG 2 hours, 3 mins
When Mary finds herself in a public scandal and the family faces financial trouble, the household grapples with the threat of social disgrace. The Crawleys must embrace change with the next generation leading Downton Abbey into the future.
Director: Simon Curtis
Writer: Julian Fellowes
Actors: Michelle Dockery, Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Laura Carmichael, Brendan Coyle, Joanne Froggatt, Jim Carter, Allen Leech, and many more
