Review of A Pocket Full of Rye

The first outing of McKenzie as Marple was certainly a difficult one.As other fellows reviewers have remarked it,they were so eager to not disappoint purists that poor Julia(an excellent actress indeed) was left with nothing to do except to be a nice and understanding but not so clever schoolmistress,totally lacking the sharp and steely glint in the eyes making Joan and Geraldine two very different but equally redoutables birds of prey.Without a touch of eccentricity,present usually in all the versions of Marple( in Joan Hickson it was her complete lack of pity,as a sort of righteous Madame Defarge ,a real Nemesis with a scourge and a whip in her arthritical hands;in Geraldine McEwan it was her dizzy and batty compassionate understanding of everyone,ruthless or hopeless as they could be)it's quite impossible to understand why a serious copper as Matthew McFadyen was compelled to hear her theories.Luckily ,after a bit of confusion here and in Evans,Great Julia has found her way,partially in Easy and very skillfully in the marvelous Mirrors,and now is at last a Superior Sleuth as Marple must be. Same can be told of this version of Rye.The first half of the movie is actually a version not of the book but of the T R Bowen version of the book.But it's a very telegraphed version ,and so overacted that the result is simply a not so pleasant spoof of the previous movie:gosh,if I want to watch Hickson ,I watch Hickson ,not a second rate version of her movies.The second half,instead,when they had finished everything it was put in the Hickson movie,magically the movie picked its own shape,the characters like creepy Mary Dove ,batty Jennifer and stuffy Percival were better developed and the very good actors had at last something to act(not Lance,Rupert Graves was always good from the beginning ,as the excellent McFadyen).People acting only in the first half of the movie as a particularly pointless Cranham(he was a much better Rex Fortescue when he played George Barton in Sparkling Cyanide) were left with nothing to do.People appearing only in the second half as sinister Prunella Scales and slick and soapy Larkin were luckier and more in the possibility to make a good impression,even if their parts were so short! No, Kevin Elyot is perhaps the better adapter of Christie works.But they must left him to fight for himself,without the obligation to steps in other one's shoes.And in Mirror Crack'd ,he has demonstrated again that he can do something good in itself ,without the silly burden to mimic past versions of the same book.But until now ,They Do It With Mirrors is the only McKenzie movie standing out as a very good ,flawless TV Movie on the same level of the better Hicksons and McEwans.