VividSimon Simply Perfect

Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

LouHomey From my favorite movies..

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Franklie If you're a true fan of Agatha Christie's novels, then you will be hugely disappointed by this film. Her story, her cleverness, her charm, her characters are all missing. Instead, we get a very flat, blank, and unintelligent slew of characters who are whining or squabbling or snotty or yelling or annoying us with their high-pitched voices. And they even threw Miss Marple in there. Why? It's not a Miss Marple story! It's a story where we love and cheer for the two main characters, but they're not worth it in this version. The biggest shame is that after fiddling so much with her story that it's unrecognizable, they still put Agatha Christie's name on it. So sad. It isn't up to par in any way. If you want to see Agatha's story, go watch the 1980 film. It is practically perfect in its loyalty to the novel and so has the cleverness and charm which keeps us reading and rereading Christie's work. This version should have a disclaimer in the title, mostly out of respect for Christie, that lets us know it's mostly an original story. She shouldn't have to bear the credit and shame of how below par this version is, comparatively at least.

bkoganbing Julia McKenzie becomes the latest in a long line of actresses to essay the part of Agatha Christie's spinster sleuth Miss Jane Marple. She may look like she's engrossed in her knitting, but she doesn't let anything escape her attention.In this story McKenzie is joined by two young companions, in fact one of them is young Sean Biggerstaff who finds a dying man on a cliff near his home. He lives long enough to give the words of the title as his last words. So why didn't they ask Evans, whomever Evans is? The trail leads them to the Savage family mansion and this is one crazy crew. Two brothers who were the breadwinners died and the rest are a lot of upper crust wastrels with no intention of being anything else. That leads to opening up a large can of worms and an elaborate murder plot that claims another victim and the final victim is still a target.By this time McKenzie and Biggerstaff are joined by Frankie Derwont who must have read some Nancy Drew books imported from America. She's a persistent young woman and Biggerstaff and her have some chemistry, but it takes time to gel.Christie stories are timeless and the BBC has a new Marple who looks like she's enjoying the part.

igorlongo A disappointing episode with an excessive amount of change and improbabilities and an outbreak of overacting from many players,from Mayall to Murray to Clarke to Williams,is really saved from the disaster by the generous efforts of Sean Biggerstaff and,above all, of Georgia Moffett,really shining as the two junior detectives,and singularly overwhelming titular sleuth McKenzie,reduced to a simple,if skillful,sparring partner for the two Partners in Crime.Frankie and Bobby,and a good Natalie Dormer as the mysterious Dark Lady of an exceedingly convoluted plot where the awkward additions to the Agatha's adventure really don't add too well,save the TV movie from the catastrophe of Sittaford and of the very awful Appointment in the Marple's sibling series Poirot.In some way,the plot is similar in the basic structure to Agatha's novel,and we are here far from the worst.Evans is not the Abominable Bachelor of late Jeremy Brett,but certainly is not a very pleasant plot.It's a pity,because the first half of the movie was very amusing, and a bit more of fidelity to the source could have driven it easily to the Golden Dozen of the Marple Marvels.

suomi_metal After watching this inaccurate, insipid film, I've completely given up on these new Agatha Christie adaptions. "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?" was not originally a Miss Marple mystery, and in countless other ways has been altered so drastically that it's hardly recognizable as the same story.I understand that when transforming a novel to TV or film, characters, times, places and events need to be altered, collapsed, edited, etc. for the sake of time and pacing and so on. Fine, we all get that. But it seems as though "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?" hasn't been altered for any logistical reasons; it's so far from the novel (which, by the way, is delightful) that they may as well have gotten rid of the last ties to the original plot and just called it a 'new' Agatha Christie mystery. It was successfully done with the Gershwins (in the form of "Crazy For You," calling it a 'new' Gershwin musical). However abysmal those new stories might be, it would probably infuriate infinitely fewer people if they just wrote new stories instead of destroying classics.