GOSFORD PARK (2001) *1/2 Robert Altman spends the first hour and a half trying unsuccessfully to get about 40 characters off the ground, succeeding only with Helen Mirren who gets to look down her nose at the rest of the cast with the best lines. Then, after one of the dullest parties in the history of even the British aristocracy a guy who probably deserves it gets killed, at which point characters are dismissed from the script (but sadly not eliminated, Freddie style) by the handful until the uninteresting truth is revealed to any viewers still awake, or who didn't walk out when Stephen Fry came flitting in, apparently in the dual mistaken beliefs that he was in a comedy, and funny. The film does successfully capture the feel of a mansion full of aristocrats in England during the 1930s, and does even better at exposing the dynamic among the servants, but those things simply aren't enough to spend nearly 150 minutes on without anything else. Oh look, the Hollywood guy is still trying to cut deals on the phone, ha ha! More boring than poorly done, but bad enough that there's no point wasting even more time trying to figure out all the reasons exactly that it didn't work. Based on an idea of Robert Altman, which reminds you how precious were the ideas of Agatha Christie.