When Regency romance movie Mr. Malcolm's List appeared on my Netflix recommendations a few days ago, I was pretty sure I had seen it when it was first released 2022, possibly even in a rare excursion to an actual movie theater. I thought maybe I had even read the 2020 book by Suzanne Allain that the movie is based on. But I didn't have a strong recollection of either.
After watching the movie, I'm still not sure if I've seen it before. I suspect that a month from now I will have again forgotten it. It's that kind of movie. Not truly terrible, just very bad.
Mr. Malcolm's List has a perfectly serviceable plot. So-called hero Jeremy Malcolm is the rich second son of a lord. He wants to get married but not to someone who only wants him for his money. He makes a list of qualifications he is seeking a in a wife. He offends Julia Thistlewaite when she doesn't meet those qualifications because she can't carry on a conversation about current events.
Julia seeks revenge by inviting her friend, heroine Selina, who is poor, to visit her in London and cause Jeremy to fall in love with her only to rebuff him because he doesn't meet the qualifications on her list. (Selina's poverty never becomes a plot point. At one point Julia gives her a nice hat, but it's not clear if that's because Selina can't afford her own hat -- her clothes are very nice -- or if Julia is trying to be nice. We never really understand any of Julia's motivations, so . . . )
SPOILERS
Jeremy and Selina for some reason fall in love for realz. Maybe because neither of them is interesting in any way? Julia, meanwhile, falls in love for realz with Selina's friend Ossery, who for some reason has also fallen in love with her.
The movie obviously lends itself to comparisons with Bridgerton, since after all they are both Regency romances and they are both set in an alternate-history Regency England where people of color are fully integrated into every level of English society including the very upper classes.
But that's like comparing the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They are both based on the same book, but the first is charming and unforgettable, while the second is an unpleasant money grab.
I was put off by Mr. Malcolm's List from the first scene, which shows Julia and Selina as tweens at boarding school together. I have seen elementary school plays where the kids were more convincing in their roles. I don't like to insult child actors, and as the movie continues it becomes clear that this terrible scene was a result of terrible direction, which we see throughout the movie. Poor Ashley Park, who is forced to play Selina's distant relation Gertie Covington as a (mentally ill?) character who can't stop giggling.
After the boarding school scene we jump forward to Julia's fourth season in London. Having received no proposals, she is in danger of becoming an old maid. This is not entirely surprising, because she is not only vapid but mean.
Grown up Selina arrives. She doesn't have a personality, per se, but she does have grace and a good understanding of the political questions of the day. (Not slavery, of course, which is never mentioned as the foundation of the wealth in the movie, but whether Parliament should fund the building of more churches.) Jeremy is smitten because she meets the criteria on his list.
In the meantime, Ossery shows up like a breath of fresh air. He is debonair and devil may care, and he has come to town to woo Selina. I really hoped he would succeed, because Selina came to life around him.
Instead, much like in a dating reality show, after they have spent a few hours together over the course of a couple of weeks, Ossery declares his undying love to Julia, telling her that he will spend his life making sure her schemes don't get out of hand. She laughs, delighted, as if nothing could be better than marrying someone who tries to smother her. This love story is unearned and annoying.
Jeremy and Selina work through her scheming and get engaged, because for some reason all the other characters think they are perfect for each other. I think Jeremy is better suited to Julia. Jeremy and Selina will have a staid future as two sticks-in-the-mud, while Jeremy and Julia would have balanced each other out and maybe had some fun together.
Finally, Julia has a cousin, Lord Cassidy, who appears thoughout the movie but remains a mystery. Is he a dissolute alcoholic, or does he only drink to drown his ability to see the terrible romances growing around him? Why is he afraid of horses?
Bonus reviews of bad novels by Suzanne Allain
Like Mr. Malcolm's List, Allain's novel The Ladies Rewrite the Rules has a good enough premise. Maxwell Dean is a cad who has published a directory of rich, eligible women so that poor younger sons and other men in need of a wealthy wife can try to marry them. Heroine Diana Boyle, a rich widow, is one of the women listed in the directory. She confronts Maxwell, reaches out to all the women in the directory to rewrite the rules (roll credits) so that the rich women are in charge, makes friends, falls in love, etc. etc.
Unfortunately the book does not live up to the premise. SPOILERS
For one thing, Diana falls in love with Maxwell. Really? The characterization is so bad that it is hard to tell why she would do so, but apparently he's just . . . misunderstood? Made a mistake? Feels bad?
For another thing, Diana is a terrible person. We are told over and over again that she endeavors to be like her mother, sweet and kind and generous. But -- she completely overlooks her sister-in-law (the sister of her dead husband), an elderly woman who has been left impoverished because Diana's late husband left everything to Diana and nothing to his sister. Diana spares no thought for this woman, other than to be annoyed by her.
The book is just badly written. Oh, it's grammatically correct and all, but if ever a writer needed to go back to a middle school creative writing class to learn to "show, don't tell," it's Allain. Here's a quote taken from random. Diana and Maxwell have been walking in a field that has just been crossed by a herd of cows.
"Might want to take 'er somewhere nice now, guv," Jim [Maxwell's groom] said in a lowered aside to Maxwell that was nonetheless perfectly audible to Diana. "This place smells worse than a fat old man's cheeser."
Diana, who was thankfully already holding her handkerchief, was able to hide her reaction to Jim's comment behind it, and Maxwell was left to hope that Diana didn't know that "cheeser" was a slang word for flatulence . . . .
The best character in the novel is an inscrutable butler who seems to maybe hate Diana but also is super helpful to her and very smart. We never really learn his back story, except that Diana's husband did not remember him in his will. I want more of him. What I really want is for him and Diana's sister-in-law to sail off into the sunset together.
Allain's novel The Wrong Lady Meets Lord Right is a marginal improvement, but still felt like it was written by a 16 year old. It is a Prince and the Pauper plot, with beautiful but poor Arabella pretending to be her sickly but rich cousin Isabelle for a season in London. Remarkably nobody catches on. Both women have improbable romances that improbably result in love and HEAs all around. I was never convinced by any of it, especially by Isabelle failing to mention to Arabella that Isabelle's late mother had arranged her engagement to Arabella's love interest.
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