Over the years, I enjoyed much of Downton Abbey, but this last entry (and I can only hope it is the last) is boring and preachy, with little of the wit and none of the charm of the previous episodes. In fact, the treatment of some beloved characters is downright cruel and deeply off-putting.
The theme of the movie is change and the story starts so differently from the rest of the series that I seriously wondered if I had accidentally gone into the wrong room at the theater, which did much to break the sense of continuity with the foregoing narrative. Granted, a lot of change was happening in that time period, some of which was necessary or inevitable, but the movie is so ham-fisted about its message that if you made a drinking game out of every time change is discussed, you'd be in an alcoholic coma within 15 minutes of the overstretched runtime.
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Photo Credit: Promotional photo for Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.