Of Swords and Parasols

St. Trinian’s is a series of seven movies (only two of which have a close continuity with each other, with a third supposedly on the way*) about a British all girls school where there are no rules, and the students rule through anarchy and gumption. Based on cartoons by Ronald Searle (which I have not read, but a complete collection is available through Amazon here) the original movie series was four movies in the 50s and 60s, a continuation in 1980, and then the recent reboot in 2007. I got into the series through the 2007 St. Trinian’s School For Bad Girls and its sequel St. Trinian’s: The Search for Fritton’s Gold, then went back and watched 3 ½ of the original movies. I am told on multiple fronts that 1980’s The Wildcats of St. Trinian’s was bad, and so have not watched it.

In most of the movies, the headmistress of the school is Miss Fritton, a transwoman with a scummy twin brother (played by the same actor-Clarence Sims in the original movies, and Rupert Everett in the reboot) and a niece who attends the school. Miss Fritton’s policy is not to properly prepare her students for the world, but to let them rule themselves so that instead the world must be prepared for them. The core difference between the originals and the reboot is that the original movies focus on the people who have to deal with the girls, with Miss Fritton typically having an antagonist relationship with them unless it suits her needs, and the reboot is all about the girls doing their thing (in both movies, the plot revolves around the idea of the school as the only place they can be free and themselves, and fighting to keep it), with Miss Fritton as more of a bohemian mother figure who aids in their plots and schemes.

Of the movies, I admit that the most recent is the only one I absolutely adore from beginning to end. In the 2007 version, Miss Fritton’s niece, Annabelle, comes to the school largely against her will, and much of the first half of the movie is devoted to her being hazed and not liking the school. Much of it relied on the kind of crass/character humiliation humor that doesn’t work for me. But once Annabelle accepted the school and they all banded together to save the school from foreclosure, it turned to pure love for me. The movie also began a subplot that becomes more central in the sequel with Colin Firth (complete with Pride and Prejudice riffs) as Miss Fritton’s ex, and love interest. (This is the only romantic element to the two movies. Had I been told a month ago that there would be something where I rooted for a Firth/Everett pairing, I would not have believed you. Especially if you’d added the part where it was canonically het.)

St. Trinian’s: The Search For Fritton’s Gold features Rupert Everett in even more roles and David Tennant as the leader of a secret society of sexists. (No, really, it’s literally the point of the secret society.) Annabelle’s character growth backtracks a bit and I feel the girls are sometimes treated as being less smart than they were in the first movie, but the movie basically took all the best parts of the first movie and dumped the parts that didn’t work for me and went “ok, how can we make it even better?” How did they? Ghostly possession! Crazy Shakespeare theories! The girls engaging in the most epic crossdressing ever and invading an all-boy’s school! Annabelle and Kelly beating up a secret society of sexists! Secret agent Kelly! The girls stealing a pirate ship! If they’d found a way to include a kitchen sink, they would have.

I am a bit iffy about the fact that something that sells itself as “school for bad girls” has a main heroine who, awesome as she is, is a fairly typical “good, meek girl finds inner awesome” heroine, but she finds it almost purely through other women, and the rest of the cast is made up of characters who would normally be her antagonists, and instead are her cohorts/posse, so it’s only a teeny iffy.

Of the original movies, I enjoyed the first and last-The Belles of St. Trinian’s and The Great St. Trinian’s Train Robbery the most. Most of the elements the reboot used were from the first movie, but the fourth is closer thematically. I also enjoyed the third movie The Pure Hell of St. Trinian’s, but only watched half of Blue Murder at St. Trinian’s, which bored me. (And kind of had a “teenaged girls are evil seductresses desperate for marriage” plot.)

Embedding is disabled, but here is the band Girls Allowed singing the theme song for the 2007 movie, with some clips from the movie.

Similar for the sequel, though I’m not quite as fond of the actual song: