Miss Meadows | Film review - A prim and proper vigilante: Katie Homes' Pulp Fiction Mary Poppins | Movie Talk | What's on TV

(Image credit: EJ Vasko)

Described by one character as a “Pulp Fiction Mary Poppins”, Katie Holmes’ eponymous heroine Miss Meadows is a vigilante of a kind cinema hasn’t seen before. A prim and proper elementary school teacher, she favours long white gloves, tap shoes, good manners and the cheery farewell ‘toodle-oo’. She also packs a .25 pistol in her purse, which she uses to shoot any evildoer who dares to cross her toe-tapping path. The film’s high-risk strategy of combining breezy tweeness with black comedy won’t work for everyone, but Holmes bravely pulls off her character’s bizarre mix of perky innocence, steely ruthlessness and deranged delusions.

Certificate 15. Runtime 84 mins. Director Karen Leigh Hopkins.

Miss Meadows is showing on Sky Movies Premiere at 6.15pm tonight. Released on DVD & Blu-ray by The Movie Partnership.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Qb3_7mauw

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.