MR. BLAKE AT YOUR SERVICE! - Mark Reviews Movies

Mr. Blake at Your Service!, Sunrise Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 19, 2025

The screenplay for Mr. Blake at Your Service! features several comedic premises and at least three too many of them. The central one of the story, from co-writer/director Gillles Legardinier's novel, is fairly charming enough on its own, so one wonders why the first-time filmmaker and co-screenwriter Christel Henon bother with the other stuff.

It's probably because, in addition to being a delightful conceit, it's a pretty ridiculous one. It revolves around a case of mistaken identity, which could be and is partially cleared up even before the plot is set in motion. At the center of it is Andrew Blake (John Malkovich), a widower of about four months and a retired businessman, who is English but has lived mostly in France, since his wife was French—in addition to being the love of his life, the center of his world, and the one person whose loss he doesn't know how to handle.

With no real idea of what to do with himself anymore, Andrew decides to return to the chateau where he and his late wife first met. She once lived on the estate, and he taught her English. Now, the manor has posted online that it has guest rooms available, or at least, that's how Andrew translates the advertisement.

The gag here is that the post is actually a want ad, looking for a new butler to tend to the home and ensure that those guest rooms are prepared and served whenever they actually are made available for rent. The other joke, perhaps, is that, being English, Andrew is too polite and unwilling to cause a fuss when Odile (Émilie Dequenne), the cook of the estate, rather bluntly treats her guest with a superior attitude, tells him to enter by the service entrance, and demands that he be awake and ready early the next morning. That, along with the cramped room with a diminishing ceiling and a tiny window, probably should give Andrew a clue that there has been a miscommunication, but we have to grant a comedy such as this at least that much room to establish itself.

Andrew and Odile clear up the misunderstanding in the morning, but since he's desperate to stay at the manor in order to feel close to his departed wife, Andrew decides to go along with the scheme anyway. Nathalie (Fanny Ardant), the lady of the house and a widow herself, is equally charmed and outraged by Andrew, who seems to hold himself well as a gentleman but has a habit of prying into the woman's private business.

Elsewhere, Odile is initially annoyed by the new butler, because he doesn't know the basics of the job and takes his curiosity about her role and herself as criticism. Manon (Eugénie Anselin), who does the laundry, appreciates Andrew's kindness when she reveals to him that she's pregnant and the father has absconded, and groundskeeper Philippe (Philippe Bas) nearly shoots the new employee after he finds Andrew trying to get a cellphone signal in the middle of the night.

It's all so very simple, if inherently convoluted and straining belief, and that's the early fun of Legardinier's tale, which just lets these characters get a measure of each other, learn to work together or accept the persistent newcomer's help, and become friends or, at least, friendly as some time passes. The comedy comes from the characters and plays as a kind of self-aware comedy of manners, as everyone accepts Andrew because of his own upright conduct, underestimates his real wisdom and know-how in things other than serving, and learns something or other from the man in time.

It's a gentle sort of comedy, more aligned, perhaps, with the many stories of similarly minded and behaved butlers. It's very English in that way, which is surely what Legardinier wants us to take from the material, given that an entire scene is devoted to Andrew and Philippe presenting each other with clichés of each other's countrypeople. The very fact that Andrew doesn't reveal who he's not or who he is at any time—until it's absolutely necessary, of course—doesn't stay as a comedic or plot contrivance. It's just the defining quality of this character, who wants to help because, for the first time in what seems like a while, it makes him feel good about himself and his usefulness in the world.

That leaves the other side of the humor and the plot, which is, to continue those national clichés, probably more in the French vein. That's a bit of screwball farce, which includes Philippe's initial attempt to shoot Andrew, a scene in which the fake butler's friends (played by Al Ginter and Anne Brionne) show up and have to pretend they don't know each other, a whole plot in which Andrew tries to stop the sale of the chateau, and a scene in which Andrew and Philippe have to—according to the odd logic of such comedy—burgle a piece of jewelry.

These are different modes and tones of humor, which mainly clash in Mr. Blake at Your Service! because the characters, for all their quirks, are so likeable and the manner of the story, for its patent absurdity, starts in such a sweet register. We can grant the movie one obvious contrivance, but it repeatedly demands that we accept more, as well as an entirely uncharacteristic strain of comedy along with them.

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