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Keeping Mum

Saw an offbeat movie that typified British humor by this title. A 2006 release from an indie studio its a bit slow but the humor is spot on. Starring Rowan Atkinson and Kirstin Scott Thomas (the wife), the former playing the role of a vicar in some English hamlet is shown gullible and lost. Their raunchy teenage daughter is source of concern and the wife too is slipping into the arms of an American golf instructor (Patrick Swayze) until this housekeeper (Maggie Smith) shows up and things start going to normal. To start she knocks out the neighborhood mongrel that is yapping all night long - nice use of sound to imply the gruesome act. Turns out she is not just any housekeeper (spoiler alert) but the wife's mother who has been in jail for murdering her errant husband and his mistress some 40 years ago. Some jokes that the mother turns the reverend on to include "a vicar, a minister, a pole, an irishman, and a rabbi all walk into a bar, and the bartender says - is this some kind of a joke?" Good use of puns including the title.
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