Based on the 2020 novel by Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club (2025) is directed by Chris Columbus, featuring a screenplay by Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote. It stars Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie, Naomi Ackie, Daniel Mays, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Tom Ellis, Jonathan Pryce, David Tennant, Geoff Bell, Paul Freeman, Richard E. Grant, Ingrid Oliver, Joseph Marcell, and Martin Bishop. The film follows Elizabeth (Mirren), Ron (Brosnan), Ibrahim (Kingsley), and Joyce (Imrie), four retirees who gather weekly for The Thursday Murder Club, a meeting of amateur sleuths who work to solve famous cold cases. When their beloved retirement home’s shady owner (Tennant) decides to sell the property, a mysterious murder soon follows, providing the club with their first real case. However, they quickly realize that solving the mystery may be more dangerous than they initially thought. 

Although the film features a safe, mostly forgettable script, Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, and Ben Kingsley squeeze every last ounce of fun from the material (which isn’t much). Their roles aren’t particularly original or complex, but it’s refreshing to see senior characters who are defined by more than just their proximity to death. The issue is that, along with containing more mystery/intrigue than it can comfortably handle, the script features too many characters, leaving little room for each to be adequately developed. This results in Helen Mirren’s Elizabeth feeling like the only properly formed character, which could’ve been a fair trade if it had left room for the mystery to breathe properly. Unfortunately, the investigation moves along at a breakneck pace, rarely allowing each new development to sink in before the next mediocre reveal/twist. 

Aside from the three veteran leads, the film only features performances that are, at best, servicable, and, at worst, noticeably amateur. This is most apparent in Celia Imrie as Joyce, the club’s newest member. She struggles to match the effortless charisma of her co-leads, her performance often coming across as overly animated and generally one-note. The script also fails the characters in the sense that they rarely feel suited for a nursing/retirement home. There isn’t a single aspect of their mental and/or physical states that these people need assistance with, so why are they there in the first place? It seems that, in most cases, elderly folk are forced to move into these places, so what made these characters feel like they had to? 

Chris Columbus’s direction feels annoyingly safe by today’s standards, but it’s consistent with the kind of family-friendly, inoffensive tone he’s known for. It feels appropriate for the film’s surprisingly soft-hearted approach to the murder mystery genre, but ultimately falls flat due to the rushed, generic script. Even without knowledge of the source material, it’s still clear that this story needed more time to breathe, feeling like it would have been far better off as a series or miniseries. It’s instead so overstuffed and underdeveloped that it even fails to convey what made the source material worth adapting in the first place. 

Overall, this is a painfully generic murder mystery that fails to capitalize on the appeal of its source material (whatever that may be). Thankfully, it avoids complete disaster due to its generally warm tone and trio of effortlessly engaging lead performances. At best, the less-picky sect of murder mystery fans will find enjoyment in the story’s atypical protagonists and setting. At worst, they’ll find themselves numb with a sense of emotionless neutrality. Netflix has greenlit stranger projects, but I don’t expect the Thursday Murder Club to reunite in the future (at least not in the form of this adaptation). C