The Christophers (2025)

Two Titans, One Glacial Vehicle - The Christophers review by griggs

Two titans in a room, circling each other, exchanging loaded dialogue — The Christophers has the bones of something special, and to be fair, in stretches it almost gets there. McKellen does what McKellen does, which still turns out to be quite a lot. But the real surprise is Coel, who doesn’t merely hold her own — she pulls in the opposite direction, and the friction between them is genuinely electric. Gunning and Corden are good value as the scheming children, with Gunning in particular getting good mileage out of Sallie's incompetence, a woman who can't quite manage herself, let alone her father — it's a nicely judged comic failure, that lands with the audience as much as it does with Julian.

The trouble is Soderbergh seems to mistake glacial pacing for sophistication. The double-bluff at the centre — who’s manipulating whom — is a decent hook, but it needed momentum to land, and the middle section just… waits. Patiently. For something.

I kept thinking it would work better on stage, which is a damning thought to have in a cinema. The camera makes curiously passive choices for a Soderbergh film, and the claustrophobic setup never quite earns its medium.

McKellen and Coel deserve a better vehicle. What they’re given is watchable — just not quite enough.