THE PLAY'S THE THING (SEE HOW THEY RUN)

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We've come to expect note perfect performances from Saoirse Ronan in movie dramas over the years.

But how does she fare in out and out comedy?

So far Ronan has proven she can generate laughs in Greta Gerwig's superb coming of age drama 'Lady Bird'.

But her appearances in Wes Anderson's 'Grand Budapest Hotel' and 'The French Dispatch' have been a case of a good actress playing it pretty straight in minor roles in two well judged, quirky comedies.

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Ronan, though, finally gets to test her comedy acting chops In Tom George's spoof 'See How They Run'.

Working from a Mark Chappell screenplay, it is an Agatha Christie parody fashioned around the celebrated author's celebrated hit play 'The Mousetrap' in London's West End.

The longest running play in the world, 'The Mousetrap' has been running continuously since 1952 - bar a 14 month interruption during the 2020 and 2021 COVID lockdowns.

Set in 1953, George's film is narrated by Adrien Brody's murder victim Leo Kopernick, an obnoxious, sleazy Hollywood movie director.

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Kopernick reels off the typical ingredients of a typical whodunnit as if he is really tired of them - the obnoxious victim who gives people several motives to kill him or her, an event resulting in the murder which brings together an array of shifty suspects and the arrival of a sleuth and their trusty assistant to question each suspect.

He then proceeds to tick each one of these plot ingredients off in the first 15 minutes of the film.

The American is killed with a sewing machine backstage in the theatre as the producers and cast celebrate 100 performances of Christie's play.

Among those gathered are Ruth Wilson's theatre impresario Petula Spencer and her shellfish eating obsessed elderly mother and assistant, played by Ania Marson.

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Charlie Cooper's theatre usher Dennis is tasked with serving drinks to the guests and tending to their needs.

The glamorous stars of 'The Mousetrap,' Harris Dickinson's matinee idol Richard Attenborough and his wife, Pearl Chanda's Sheila Sim are among those celebrating with their fellow cast members, Gregory Cox's unnamed actor playing Major Metcalf in Christie's play and Maggie McCarthy's actress who plays Mrs Boyle.

David Oyelowo's camp and pompous screenwriter Mervyn Cocker-Norris, who has been tasked with adapting the hit play into the movie, quaffs champagne with his jealous Latin lover, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd's Gio.

Reece Shearsmith's movie producer John Woolf is there with his wife, Sian Clifford's Edana Romney but is having an affair with his assistant, Pippa Bennett-Warner's Ann Saville.

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To the annoyance of Dickie Attenborough, a drunken and lascivious Kopernick makes a pass at Sylvia Sims at the reception and they end up having a brawl.

This results in the film director lunging at the actor and them both landing straight into a specially baked cake.

Kopernick goes backstage to change his cake covered clothes and meets his untimely end.

But while Attenborough is a suspect, he isn't the only person with a motive.

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Cocker-Norris has been infuriated by the American's dismissal of his screenwriting as boring and also by his refusal to remain faithful to the play.

Having bought the rights to 'The Mousetrap' but been outwitted in the deal which stipulates no movie can be shot until the play's run has ended, Woolf is desperate to get it made.

He is also being blackmailed by the murder victim about his affair.

Spencer may have good reason for Kopernick to be bumped off too - if only to frustrate efforts to turn 'The Mousetrap' into a movie and prolong its run.

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With Kopernick's body dragged onstage, Sam Rockwell's jaded alcoholic Inspector Stoppard and Saoirse Ronan's eager Constable Stalker are assigned to the case by Tim Key's Metropolitan Police Commissioner Harrold Scott.

In a nice nod to one of Attenborough's most celebrated movie roles, we learn from Scott that Scotland Yard's resources are mostly tied up solving the Rillington Place murders.

He asks Stoppard to show Stalker the ropes of a murder investigation in a bid to encourage more women into the police.

Stalker is so excited at being involved in a murder investigation she eagerly writes everything down in a pocket book.

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However she keeps having to be reminded by the Inspector not to jump to conclusions every time they question a suspect.

Stoppard appears largely disinterested in the hard graft of detective work - going to the pub during a stakeout of Woolf's offices because he can't be bothered and leaving it to the junior officer. 

Will this mismatched policing duo solve the mystery?

And who will be unveiled as the murderer?

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Coming seven months after Kenneth Branagh's second Hercule Poirot mystery 'Death On The Nile' and three months before Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig deliver the 'Knives Out' sequel 'Glass Onion,' the timing of George's Agatha Christie spoof could not be better.

Audiences, after all, have rediscovered a taste for star studded whodunnits which George and his screenwriter Chappell happily acknowledge in this breezy, affectionate send up .

But while 'See How They Run' is undoubtedly amusing in parts, you can't help feeling it doesn't quite deliver the belly laughs you expect.

The ingredients are there for a quirky Wes Anderson or Coen Brothers style approach and,at times, George appears to flirt with that.

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However you never feel he is going full throttle.

While there are moments of well executed farce - particularly during the unmasking of the killer at the home of Shirley Henderson's Agatha Christie - you walk away thinking 'See How They Run' is an uneven affair which should much funnier than it actually is.

The cast certainly give their all in George's film.

Brody is suitably despicable as the sleazy, drunken Hollywood blacklisted murder victim and narrator.

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Oyelowo delightfully camps it up as Cocker-Norris, while Wilson delivers an amusing spoof of the tough, middle aged spinsters you tend to get in Christie tales.

Shearsmith, Bennett-Warner and Clifford are good value as the love triangle, while Cooper delivers a very amusing eyewitness scene in which he is hopelesssly scant on detail.

Dickinson and Chanda enjoy sending up British acting royalty, without overdoing the luvviness.

Key is wonderfully pompous and self-serving as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

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Henderson amuses too as Agatha Christie alongside Lucian Msamati as her husband, Max Mallowan.

However it is the double act of Ronan and Rockwell who mostly steal the show - with the exception of a superb turn from Cooper's 'This Country' co-star Paul Chahidi as Christie's butler.

With her flat Dublin accent and her boundless enthusiasm, Ronan makes a great comic counterpoint to Rockwell's jaded Inspector who is nursing a broken heart as a result of a failed marriage.

In the end, it is she who walks away with the acting honours with a spirited performance, using her eyes this time to great comic effect.

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And yet, despite the best efforts of Ronan and the rest of the cast, 'See How They Run' never quite feels the sum of its parts.

Chappell's script is skittish, playful and it toys with farce but it seems too restrained.

It can't hold a candle to Frank Oz's hilarious 2007 original version of 'Death at a Funeral' which is the perfect example of a brilliantly executed English movie farce.

And why does that work? 

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Because it is braver in the way it goes after its laughs and its cast are unrestrained.

For all the flaws of 'See How They Run', George's film is nevertheless an amusing diversion from the horror movies and superhero tales that have dominated our multiplexes in recent times.

The period details of post Second World War London are wonderfully captured by Amanda McArthur's production design, John Reid's art direction and Sophia Millar and Celia de la Hay's set decoration.

The film's costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux and the hair and make-up designer Nadia Stacey and her 23 person team deserve credit too.

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'See How They Run' is a pleasant and occasionally amusing watch.

It certainly whets the appetite for Johnson's 'Knives Out' sequel before it lands this summer on Netflix.

Let's hope, though, that 'Glass Onion' can deliver a murder mystery tale which is less disposable than this and also one that is ultimately more satisfying than 'Death on the Nile'.

('See How They Run' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on September 9, 2022)