Movie Monday: The "Calendar Girls" Edition

Because I've got a migraine, today's Movie Monday is going to be short and sweet.

If you haven't seen "Calendar Girls" (2003) yet, do so at your earliest opportunity. No,, really. It might look like a chick flick. It might actually be a chick flick. But, even if you don't particularly like chick flicks (I don't much like them myself, actually), you still need to see this movie.

The performances, from the likes of Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, Penelope Wilton, and a whole lot of other British actors, are fabulous. The story is moving without being cloying. It's also very, very funny.

"Calendar Girls" is based on the true story of what happened when a group of middle-aged women from a village in England decided that they would produce a pin-up girl calendar, with themselves as the models, to raise money for a sofa for the visitors' room at their local hospital after one of the women's husbands died of leukemia. That's all. Just enough to buy a sofa. Except that their project kind of got away from them, they found fame if not personal fortune, and learned, just like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz", that there's no place like home, family, and friends.

Here's the trailer for the film:



I hadn't seen "Calendar Girls" until the past weekend, when my roommate turned it on, on OnDemand, sat me down, and told me that I had to see it. I was skeptical, but I sat and watched and I'm so glad I did. So, my whole purpose today is to pass this forward. Go. Sit down. Watch the movie. It's very, very good.

And, oh, yeah. From the research I've been able to do, the calendar the women produced did raise the money to buy the sofa. In fact, it turned into calendars for several years, all still dedicated to raising money for Leukemia and Lymphoma Research, a UK charity dedicated to funding research into blood cancers. To date, the calendars have raised over three million pounds toward the goal of eradicating those cancers.

Just goes to show, great things can come from initially modest ambitions.