Butler's Cinema Scene

“DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA” My rating: B (Theaters)

125 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

The chickens — every last one of them — have come home to roost by the time “Downton Abbey: The New Era” wraps up the saga of the Grantham clan.

Seriously, folks, there are at least a dozen or so mini-plots playing out against the two main narratives in Julian Fellows’ screenplay…just about every character gets his/her moment in the spotlight before bringing down the curtain.

On one level it’s ridiculous…like watching a stage juggler keep a dozen balls in the air while doing a tap dance on one leg and singing “Old MacDonald” in Farsi. At the same time you have to admire the craftsmanship that keeps it all from descending into pure chaos.

Fans of the PBS series and the previous film entry will be beside themselves.

The film begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral. By the time it’s over just about every character is domestically settled (if not in a conventional marriage then in an appropriate arrangement for the personalities in question).

Two big plots here. No. 1: Downton Abbey becomes a movie studio. No. 2: Half the clan heads off to the South of France to explore a new addition to the family holdings and poke around in unexplored Grantham history.

First, the movie narrative. Seems Downton has a very leaky and expensive roof to repair. When movie director Jack Barber (Hugh Dancy) proposes spending a small fortune for the right to film a motion picture at the abbey, the Granthams swallow their uneasiness about actors (you know, women plastered in makeup and men just plastered) and assent.

At the same time, dowager Violet (Maggie Smith) is informed that a French gentleman she knew as a young bride (we’re talking 1864…the Lincoln administration) has died and left her his estate on the Riviera. So a delegation of family and staff invade the Continent…they can check out the new digs while avoiding the chaos generated by those “movie people” back home.

So basically you’ve got two films that come together at the end.

The one set in England is a riff on “Singin’ in the Rain.” The movie crew are shooting a silent feature, but “The Jazz Singer” has just opened and halfway through filming the movie must convert to sound. (The time appears to be 1928…the Great Depression has not yet reared its ugly head.)

This poses problems for the movie-in-a-movie’s leading lady, Myrna Dalgleish (Laura Haddock), who dominates the screen with her cool beauty but in real life is an angry/insecure diva who speaks in a Cockney bray. At this point Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), who has stayed behind to hold the fort, discovers she has a talent for voiceover work. At the same time cinema-crazed former footman Mr. Molesley (Kevin Doyle) uses his previously useless knowledge of literature to knock out desperately needed original dialogue for the actors.

Oh, yes, the male lead of the movie being shot is swashbuckling star Guy Dexter (Dominic West), who takes a shine (ahem) to the chief butler, Mr. Barrow (Robert James-Collier), who we learned in the earlier “Downton” movie bats for the other team.

And I haven’t even mentioned the simmering attraction between Dancy’s character and Lady Mary, whose husband (a race car driver played in the previous film by Matthew Goode) is off gallivanting abroad and never seen.

Meanwhile in France, Robert Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) begins to suspect that he is the offspring of an illicit dalliance between his mother and that now-deceased French fellow, whose widow (the great Nathalie Bay, here criminally underused) is incensed about losing her winter palace to a pack of stuffy Brits. But her son (Alex Skarbek) is more welcoming; he believes that Robert is his half brother.

Whoo-hooo! Dirty family laundry!

There are also minor (very minor) conundrums among the abbey staff and various far-flung Grantham relations and acquaintances.

To ensure lots of screen time for everyone in the massive cast (many of whom saw their story arcs resolved in the last movie and have little to do in this one), director Simon Curtis (“My Week with Marilyn,” “Woman in Gold”) breaks even the most banal conversation into a series of quick-cut reaction shots so as to register the faces of surrounding cast members. That way everyone gets screen time. It’s like “My Dinner with Andre” filmed like an action sequence.

Silly? Yes. Are we painfully aware of all the seams and cut-and-paste moments in the narrative? Yep.

Does it matter? Probably not. “Downton Abbey: The New Era” is like attending a reunion with people we all know well and whose company, foibles and all, we relish.

Not to mention the costumes and castles.

| Robert W. Butler