MARK STEYN REVIEWS THE DOWNTON ABBEY MOVIE:

A week ago I was having a conversation in the Fox News green room about the Downton Abbey movie with …well, go on, guess: Tucker? Kilmeade? No, it was Tyrus. A hulking ex-professional wrestler who could crush the average effete English earl between his toes doesn’t seem the most obvious fan of Downton’s doings, and we disagreed on Lady Mary, for whom he has an intense loathing and to whose icy bitchery I’ve warmed up over the years. But it does suggest the broad appeal of Julian Fellowes’ “franchise”, and helps explain why, franchise-wise, Downton Abbey clobbered the latest Rambo at the box office: Stallone’s swan song cost three times as much and its box-office take is less than half.

To be sure, if you’ve never seen the earlier capers, it will be largely meaningless as a stand-alone movie — but then that’s true of the new Rambo and X-Men and Ant-Man and everything else at the multiplex. Perhaps, in the manner of The Avengers, they should have subtitled it Downton: Endgame, or Infinity Tea or Age of Carson. Strung around a visit to the Abbey by George V and Queen Mary, the plot hinges on a broken boiler and the servants’ resentment at a toffee-nosed Page of the Back Stairs from Buckingham Palace — so it makes a nice change from the Incredible Hulk ripping yet another hole in the space-time continuum.

Indeed it does, and I can say that as someone who’s watched the movie after only having seen about 15 minutes of the original TV series. Read the whole thing.