The Christophers ★★★1/2
- 2filmcritics
- 5 hours ago
- 4 min read
Availability: Showing in theaters in the US; UK release mid-May; no other international release dates yet. Online availability is expected on Hulu and other Neon-related sites later in 2026, likely a couple months from the April release date. Neon has US and international distribution rights. See Just Watch here for up-to-date rental and purchase options.
A Painterly Odd Couple
Shakespearian pro (and “Lord of the Rings” veteran) Ian McKellen is Julian Sklar, a disheveled, crotchety, verbose, ego-driven, old-white-male declining artist, who meets his match in Lori Butler, the reserved, regal, astute, insecure yet self-aware 30-something Black female artist, doubling as a food truck employee, nicely embodied by Michaela Coel (Aneka in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”).
The script ... is a surprisingly effective turn on the two-hander featuring older, assured person learning lessons from younger or less polished yet savvy one.
The screenplay by Ed Solomon, whose prior scripts—“Men in Black,” the “Bill & Ted” series, “Charlie’s Angels”—give little hint of this one, is a surprisingly effective turn on the two-hander featuring older, assured person learning lessons from younger or less polished yet savvy one (“Green Book,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “The Holdovers”).
The compelling, odd-couple artistic duo of Lori (Michaela Coel) and Julian (Ian McKellen) plays out against mysteries involving the wrapped paintings Lori carries: are they the originals? fakes? Were the originals the ones cut up and destroyed? About to be burned?
The narrative revolves around Julian’s two wastrel children—Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Gunning)—hiring Lori to finish a series of paintings, The Christophers, that their father cannot or will not. The Christophers Series I and II sold for millions of pounds in Dad’s celebrity past, in contrast to the 10,000 or so pounds for his current work. Barnaby and Sallie need Series III, lying incomplete in a bathtub upstairs at Julian’s, finished so they have an inheritance once Dad dies. Lori, who stopped exhibiting her paintings 20 years ago and doesn’t make enough money as an art restorer or Kung Pao Chicken vendor to pay the rent, seems a natural to complete, or forge, Series III.
Julian thinks Lori has been hired to help him catalog his work and organize his house/study, the latter a claustrophobic mess of warren-like, over-filled rooms in connecting townhouses in London, as disheveled as he is. With two front doors to two houses, one arguably representing his work/studio, the other his private life, Julian’s digs serve as a metaphor for the public and private sides of his life, which he has failed to reconcile.
After a visit or two, Lori abruptly tells him why she’s really there, having little love lost for the unintelligent, untalented, and unethical kids. And for a while Julian and Lori are collaborators. Their relationship with each other loosely follows the trajectory of young person schooling and winning over older person. But it doesn’t come easy. And that’s the beauty of the script and Steven Soderbergh’s directing. It’s not only the power shifts, of which there are several. It’s also the slow, jagged, unpredictable revelations of their intertwined pasts.
She gains his respect. Will he gain hers?
Lori operates deftly as someone who can delve into Julian’s personality from his paintings. She stuns him with her understanding of his lovelorn past through her “reading” of The Christophers Series. “You used ochre and you hated it,” she says, exposing his anger at his lost lover. The Sidewalk Sales he proffers in front of his townhouse are, she tells him, not a repudiation of the vagaries of the art market; rather, they are his attempt to act as if he’s in control of the downward trajectory of his artistic oeuvre. She gains his respect. Will he gain hers?
The backdrop of the art world with its ethical questions, idiosyncratic valuations, and exploitation of the muse is intriguing, but it’s the relationship that’s definitive. To say she functions as his therapist may be accurate, as she produces an emotional and artistic catharsis in the old painter. Yet the relationship is more complex than that. Julian has impostor syndrome; Lori’s been damaged and understands pain. Their connection has the potential to heal her, too, a kind of passing of the artistic baton.
Barnaby and Sallie are caricatures. Good for a laugh line or two: “This floor could be the gift shop,” says Barnaby, marching through the townhouses days after his father’s death. Corden is funnier than this. The two are necessary for the set-up, for presenting ethical dilemmas to Lori and Julian (more often than we’d like), and for little else.
It’s the artistic odd couple—visually, socio-economically, and temperamentally opposites—in outstanding performances by McKellen and by Coel, who is his on-screen equal (no easy task), that we want to watch. A compelling duo, in search of themselves.
She says: In (much delayed) retrospect, could this film be seen more negatively (as in some reactions to "Green Book"): a black woman serving an older white male, helping him get recognition, not herself?
He says: Weakened, if only a bit, by McKellen’s mumbling and now and then indecipherable speech.
Date: 2026
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Ian McKellen, Michaela Coel, James Corden, Jessica Gunning
Countries: United Kingdom, United States
Language: English
Runtime: 100 minutes
Other Awards: 1 win and 1 other nomination to date