It's a real-life story adapted into a grown-up comedy that is warm, winning and sexy. Call it "The Full Auntie."
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
When the biggest compliment you can pay a picture is that it is professional and not smug, there's a little something missing, like invention.
Philadelphia Inquirer by Carrie Rickey
The story hooks us because stars Helen Mirren and Julie Walters look as fetching in woolens and Wellingtons as they do in the altogether. But it reels us in because it is about people who for so long have paid lip service to making a difference that they are profoundly altered when they actually do.
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
Don't race to see it unless a female "Full Monty" is just what you've been waiting for.
Though the film is never dull, and playing by the cast is spirited, it's actually a surprisingly gentle movie, with no big "Full Monty"-like finale to send auds buzzing into the street.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Unfortunately, the material doesn't justify the talent. These women deserve more than Calendar Girls ultimately gives them.
Village Voice by Jessica Winter
Remains a genial lesson in how to both honor and subvert womanly expectations.
Los Angeles Times by Manohla Dargis
Closer in texture and consistency to individually wrapped American cheese than good, tangy English cheddar. But even humble plastic-wrapped cheese has its virtues and so does this film.
It creates a strong sense of a living, breathing community, and you root for its affectionately drawn characters as they experience the giddiness of triumph without forgetting the project's bittersweet inspiration.
The real-life calendar girls were actual human beings, and here they're merely comic patsies, lacking the distinctive personalities that made the men of "The Full Monty" so endearing, their final act of revelation so peculiarly dignified.