The Christophers (2025)
Genre: Comedy / Drama
Duration: 100 minuten
Country:
United Kingdom
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: Ian McKellen, Michaela Coel and James Corden
IMDb score:
6,8 (4.862)
Releasedate: 7 September 2025
The Christophers plot
The children of a once-famous artist hatch a cunning plan. They enlist a female forger to complete his long-abandoned unfinished paintings. This way, they can sell his works after his death and still receive some inheritance.
Reviews & comments
mrklm
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- 12387 messages
- 10472 votes
The children [Jessica Gunning, James Corden] of the elderly artist Julian Sklar [Ian McKellen] persuade restorer Loria Butler [Michael Coel] to take on Julian's assistant role. In that capacity, she could complete Julian's third series of 'Christophers', allowing the children to sell them. Lori listens to Julian's monologues in this virtual one-man show by McKellen. He certainly does not disappoint, but it would have been more engaging if the “conversations” hadn't been so one-sided. A more interesting story would also have been welcome.
Translated from Dutch · View original
Mr_Marty
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- 261 messages
- 218 votes
Sally (Jessica Gunning) and Barnaby (James Corden), the estranged children of world-famous painter and former reality TV star Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen), are after a number of their father's paintings to make a financial killing. They are called 'The Christophers' because they are portraits of their bisexual father's great love, which he never finished after the relationship ended, but also could never bring himself to part with. Lori Butler (Michaele Coel), a talented former art college classmate of Sally's, must infiltrate Julian, pocket the canvases, and then finish them. Because Lori infiltrates Julian under her own name, a simple internet search by him is enough to discover that something is amiss. Whereupon Julian begins to use Lori for his purposes.
This looks like a sort of film noir-style crime film where everyone is deceiving each other, but in fact, it is a sort of bitter monologue by Ian McKellen as a jaded boomer artist who rages against the dying of the light, with Coel as the straight man. In that respect, it is quite comparable to Richard Linklater's Blue Moon. I think that how much you liked Blue Moon predicts by at least 80% how much you will like The Christophers. Personally, I found McKellen just slightly better than Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon (and he received an Oscar nomination for his role), but Blue Moon had much more focus and really dared to go for that theatrical setting. The Coens-esque crime plot built around McKellen's grumbling one-liners in The Christophers never really gets going and actually only serves as a distraction, no matter how inspired the casting of James Corden as the dim-witted fail son is.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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