Kristin Scott Thomas and Sharon Horgan star in this feel-good dramedy, based on the real-life upswell of female-led choirs on British military bases over the past decade. At the helm is Peter Cattaneo, who directed the breakout hit The Full Monty back in 1997. This is a return to familiar territory for the director.

It’s set on a remote military base in the English countryside. When most of the soldiers are shipped to Afghanistan, the wife of the commanding officer, Kate (Scott Thomas), decides to get involved with the base’s social committee while her husband is away. Lisa, played by actor-comedian Sharon Horgan, heads the committee, and the two immediately butt heads over what kinds of activities the families left behind should get up to. Lisa and the rest of the wives are a little more blue collar than Kate, and they only seem interested in leisurely pursuits, like potlucks and wine nights, while Kate believes shared activities should lead to a common goal designed to form camaraderie.

Military Wives comes to us from a screenplay by Rosanne Flynn and Rachel Tunnard, who have the task of adapting the BBC docuseries The Choir, in which choirmaster Gareth Malone teaches choral music to unlikely participants. The fourth series of the program focused on Malone forming a choir with the female inhabitants on a U.K. military base (not all of them were wives, per se), and the producers of this film have made a crowd-pleaser based on that season.

Flynn and Tunnard’s script picks up some of the same character and story beats from the television series, but it glosses over so much of what made the program thought provoking. For instance, the divide between the base and the town nearby is never addressed. The class differences between the wives is brushed upon in the beginning and completely tossed aside after the story gets going. The result is a very surface-level mash-up of the docuseries.

The screenplay also ousts Malone and invents Scott Thomas and Horgan’s characters to head up the choir. Presumably, there were choirs of military wives predating the series, but one can’t help but wonder if the male instructor was excised to give the film a more Rosie the Riveter messaging. Nor does it ever get political about the war in Afghanistan. Instead the filmmakers stick to the clearly defined music is the language of the soul path, and it never veers away. 

However, judging Military Wives as a stand-alone film, I actually really enjoyed it, though it lacks The Choir’s complexity. Like many of us, I’ve been social distancing for more than two months now, so it’s affecting to watch a film about a group working together, and to see a choir form from the ground up is substantially impactful. I got weepy several times thanks to the movie’s earnestness and dedication to the idea that singing, whether alone or in groups, has a powerful effect on one’s well-being.