Calendar Girls MPAA Rating: PG-13 Entertainment: +3 Content: -1 1/2

Based on a true story, Calendar Girls is a funny and heartwarming film about a group of middle-aged Yorkshire women who decide to take on cancer in a unique way. When Annie (Julie Walters) loses her husband, John (John Alderton), to leukemia, she hopes that the local Womens Institute (WI) will support the hospital that cared for him with a memorial fundraiser. But the stuffy and proper WI lacks the resources and energy to execute a successful and exciting project. With Annie running out of options, her energetic best friend, Chris (Helen Mirren), proposes a solution: The women of the WI could pose for a calendar in the nude. Hoping for a tasteful celebration of their aging femininity, the women are inspired by the penned words of Annies deceased husband, The flowers of Yorkshire are like the women of Yorkshire more beautiful with each new stage, and the last stage is the most glorious.

Calendar Girls raises a number of interesting issues for the Christian audience. What, for instance, is the relationship between the beauty of the human body and art, and can nudity ever be artistic? The issue in the latter question is whether or not the images inflame lust a charge that is creatively diminished in this film because of the age of the models (40s60s). In fact, their advanced age serves to lead the audience to the recognition that genuine beauty is something more than, but not excluding, their aging bodies. A biblical view of anthropology and sexuality would affirm the tremendous beauty in the human form but might question the wisdom of publicly exposing that beauty. The most objectionable elements of the film are not the calendar or the nude photo shoots, which cleverly obscure the bodies. A brief shot of a pornographic magazine and some bad language are what earn a negative acceptability rating for Calendar Girls.

Preview Reviewer: Shaun Daugherty
Distributor: Touchstone Pictures