The Christophers (dir. Steven Soderbergh)

by Jack Martin | May 13, 2026

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 100 mins

UK Distributor: Picturehouse Entertainment

UK Release Date: 15 May 2026

WHO’S IN THE CHRISTOPHERS?

Ian McKellen, Michaela Coel, James Corden, Jessica Gunning, Tilly Botsford, Ferdy Roberts, Lucy McCormick, Le Fil

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Steven Soderbergh (director, cinematographer, editor), Ed Solomon (writer), Iain Canning and Jim Parks (producers), David Holmes (composer)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

An aspiring artist (Coel) is asked to infiltrate the home of a reclusive painter (McKellen)…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON THE CHRISTOPHERS?

Eerily like the collection of paintings that form this film’s title, there’s an unfinished quality to The Christophers. That doesn’t necessarily mean it feels aesthetically incomplete, for director Steven Soderbergh’s film is as competently made as anything else the filmmaker has done over his long and varied career, but the script by Ed Solomon – who’s written everything from the Bill & Ted movies to the first Men in Black to Soderbergh’s crime caper No Sudden Move – is strangely lacking in narrative poise. And that, sad to say, is what makes the film something of a disappointment.

It’s a shame, for between the supernatural drama Presence and especially the excellent spy caper Black Bag, Soderbergh’s had a fairly good run over the last year or so. But here, even he struggles at times to enrichen a script that doesn’t entirely know what to do with itself, biding its time a little too much while offering little of meaningful emotional substance. It amounts to something that oddly refuses to come alive, despite many opportunities for it to do so.

The film opens with young artist Lori Butler (Michaela Coel) being convinced by her old art school friend Sallie (Jessica Gunning) and her brother Barnaby (James Corden) to act as their eyes and ears during a scheme involving their elderly father, the famed painter Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen). Once renowned in the art world for his eccentric work, including two series of paintings called The Christophers that were based on his former lover, Julian has since become a recluse who’s resorted to filming back-to-back Cameos to pay his way through the final years of his life. But what his children are really after is a third, unfinished collection of Christophers paintings that they want Lori to somehow acquire and complete so that they can sell them for millions after his eventual passing, so Lori manages to successfully interview as his new assistant and put into motion a plan that will see everyone get what they want, including Julian who initially wants the incomplete paintings to be destroyed.

But after such an intriguing set-up, one that indicates some poignant human drama as well as a few twists and turns along the way, the film just stops in its tracks and remains in that neutral mode for most of the rest of the film. Much of it takes place in Julian’s home with him and Michaela Coel’s Lori almost the only characters we explicitly see, which coincidentally makes this the second film in as many weeks to feature Coel in a contained two-hander revolving around themes of artistic expression. Unlike Mother Mary, however, The Christophers doesn’t have a ghostly motif or a similar equivalent to keep itself visually or narratively engaging, nor does it have as much compelling dialogue, with Solomon filling his various monologues with fanciful but ultimately empty ramblings that delay the actual point. The only reason they sound more weighty than they actually are is because they’re delivered by the likes of Ian McKellen, whose booming yet soothing voice could make the menu of a Chinese takeaway sound like a Shakespearian soliloquy, but while he and Coel are very good in the movie there’s only so much they can do with characters who are barely defined beyond their sometimes incomprehensible dialogue.

Even the central conflict barely makes a dent, for while it defies convention by revealing its cards much earlier than a traditional three-act structure would dictate, such a notion causes the plot and most if not all other inciting incidents to stall. It also becomes clear that neither Solomon nor Soderbergh know where to take their initially strong premise next, flip-flopping between ideas and motivations that mostly go nowhere (sometimes within the same scene) before ending on an emotional note that doesn’t feel entirely earned. That’s because the relationship between the two main characters never feels as though it’s reached a point where they know and trust each other enough to share such a moment, so it rings slightly false when the film expects its audience to have an emotional reaction during certain parts that, thanks to the meandering nature of the script, end up feeling awkwardly inserted into random moments.

There are some good things to say about The Christophers, which ultimately do not make it an outright bad film. Soderbergh’s competent, if unremarkable, handle on the filmmaking gives it the slightest jolt of energy, as do the two lead performances which are lively enough to hold your attention in spite of the material, particularly McKellen who’s a cantankerous delight. Some scenes do show glimpses of the much more insightful movie this could have been, particularly one sequence that sees McKellen’s Julian come alive as he desecrates one of his paintings with everything from glitter to feathers to a box cutter, which carries a sense of unfiltered joy that is sadly not present elsewhere in the film. Also, any film that can somehow make even James Corden come across as dignified deserves at least some partial credit, for that is a herculean task in and of itself.

But unfortunately, it’s not enough to deter from the overall sense of being underwhelmed, as there are always points where you could see a much stronger movie coming out of what is, again, quite a good set-up. Even if it were more narratively conventional than what the filmmakers ended up going with, The Christophers still would have at least felt as though it was going somewhere, rather than relying on the unmistakable power of its lead actors to make it all sound heavier than it actually is, and would have made it significantly less of a disappointing missed opportunity.

SO, TO SUM UP…

The Christophers is an underwhelming art drama that, despite competent filmmaking and the presence of an energetic Ian McKellen, fails to make use of its intriguing set-up in a script by Ed Solomon that meanders excessively, resulting in a film that has little of substance or value to say.