Mike Leigh (Career Girls) has left an unmistakable stamp on the ‘90s, writing and directing four films that broke the conventional feature film mold and, in turn, netted the Brit accolades from peers, critics, festivals, and even two Academy Award nominations (for Secrets & Lies).  What makes Leigh’s work so invigorating is the fact that he rarely follows a proper script, letting his actors improvise dialogue from a basic outline of the film’s story.

Which is why Topsy-Turvy, Leigh’s fifth and last film of the decade, is such a surprise.  His biopic of Gilbert and Sullivan runs nearly three hours, most of which is spent on well-choreographed numbers from their plays.  Well-choreographed numbers?  Mike Leigh?  What gives?  While the film is still flawlessly executed, it’s so much of a departure from Leigh’s previous films that Turvy is almost disappointing.  Simply put, if you’re a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan, you will love this film.  If you don’t particularly care for their garish musicals, you may admire Turvy’s acting and grandeur, but don’t expect much else.

Focusing on the fourteen months leading up to the premiere of “The Mikado,” Turvy introduces its main characters in a rather unique way.  The two don’t share a scene together until about forty minutes into the picture, which leaves plenty of time to establish them as completely separate artists, rather than two hit-makers connected at the hip.

Turvy begins in 1884 with the debut of “Princess Ida” at the legendary Savoy Theatre.  The play was a critical and commercial flop, which sent both Gilbert and Sullivan reeling in different directions career-wise.  William Schwenk Gilbert (Jim Broadbent) is haunted by a newspaper review that referred to the playwright as “the King of Topsy-Turvy-dom.”  Meanwhile, Arthur Sullivan (Allan Corduner, The Impostors) is shown as a physically ailing composer at a bit of a career crossroads.  He hates the repetitious music that he has been composing for Gilbert’s equally repetitious themes of magic that propel each of their plays.  Sullivan wants to write an opera, while Gilbert wants to plod along using more of the same supernatural subjects.

Courtesy of a well-timed museum exhibit of Japanese culture, Gilbert gets the idea that eventually becomes “The Mikado,” the production that jumpstarted the duo’s creative juices.  They went on to do The Gondoliers and The Yeoman of the Guard and blah blah blah.  There isn’t much in the way of surprises, but there rarely ever is in a biopic.  The only revelation here is that G & S’s actors were used to wearing corsets in each play, but couldn’t in “The Mikado” because the Japanese attire wouldn’t hang right on their frames.

To Leigh’s credit, he can elicit amazing performances from his actors, and Turvy is certainly no exception.  Broadbent is fantastic, in a stick-up-your-ass sort of way (a big surprise if you remember his sleazy nightclub owner in last year’s Little Voice).  Corduner is great in an altogether different way, looking a bit like a smirking Inspector Clouseau.  It seems like he’s in on some private joke (maybe he saw what the running time was).  Also worth noting is the performance of portly Leigh regular Timothy Spall, who plays one of the Savoy regulars, as well as the technical work, which is fantastic from the costumes to the art and production design.

Since I am not a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan (I just found out that they’re responsible for the songs that Sideshow Bob sang on the Cape Fear episode of The Simpsons), I found Turvy to contain too many song-and-dance numbers.  There is an Oscar-quality film somewhere in there, but unfortunately, it’s buried amidst the musical numbers.  But, like I said, G & S enthusiasts will probably wish there were even more.

2:40 – for nudity and adult situations