Despite his desire to retire in the early 2010s, Steven Soderbergh just couldn’t quit the movies. For his latest, we go to 2026’s The Christophers.

Once a fixture of the London scene, elderly artist Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) now largely lives in seclusion. Famous for paintings called “The Christophers”, he left additional entries in that series unfinished.

Julian’s children Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Gunning) care about nothing more than their inheritance so they hire art forger Lori Butler (Michaela Coel) to act as his assistant and gain access to Julian’s unfinished compositions. This sends Lori on a mission to schmooze Julian and fake his work to profit the kids.

Well into his mid-80s, McKellen remains a delightful on-screen presence. However, the material lets him down here, as Christophers fails to create a particularly engaging character journey.

This trickles down to McKellen’s performance, as he camps up a storm. Granted, some of this makes sense given the flamboyant artist he portrays.

Nonetheless, McKellen goes over the top too consistently. Whatever depth could be plumbed from Julian fails to materialize in McKellen’s performance.

By contrast, Coel underplays relentlessly. While I prefer her approach, the two don’t mesh, as they feel like they exist in different movies.

I can’t claim either actor lets down their parts because the screenplay seems so thin. While it comes with some intriguing threads – especially as Julian and Lori get to know each other – Christophers doesn’t explore these or the characters well.

Too much of Christophers feels like an adapted stage play. It relies heavily on contrived dialogue and clumsy situations.

At its core, Christophers comes with potential. As created, the movie feels superficial and forgettable.

The Christophers appears in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. The film came with a satisfying presentation.

Sharpness worked fine. A few dimly-lit interiors leaned a little soft but the majority of the movie boasted appealing delineation.

Neither shimmering nor jaggies marred the image, and edge haloes failed to manifest. Source flaws also didn’t appear.

Colors went with a strong mix of blue/teal and amber/yellow. The disc replicated these trite choices well.

Blacks seemed deep and firm, while shadows brought largely positive clarity. The end product deliver solid visuals.

Did a character drama like Christophers need a Dolby Atmos soundtrack? No, and the soundscape offered the expected scope.

Downconverted to Dolby TrueHD 7.1, the soundfield stayed restrained most of the time. Street scenes opened up in a satisfying manner and music showed good breadth.

However, most of the movie focused on dialogue spoken in interior settings. This meant that the soundfield simply lacked much to do most of the time.

At least audio quality worked fine, with speech that seemed accurate and distinctive. Music became full and lush.

As noted, effects played a fairly small role, but they seemed warm and well-reproduced nonetheless. This became a perfectly acceptable mix for a character drama.

In addition to the film’s trailer, we get a Conversation with Screenwriter Ed Solomon and Charlie Kaufman that lasts a whopping one minute, 59 seconds as they offer some general notes about the film. This appears to abbreviate a much longer chat and it becomes fairly useless at its current length.

The disc opens with an ad for I Love Boosters. We also find the trailer for Christophers.

Even with a combination of director Steven Soderbergh and actor Ian McKellen, The Christophers can’t go much of anywhere. The film leans on clichés too much of the time and feels thinly developed. The Blu-ray offers very good picture, adequate audio and insubstantial supplements. Christophers disappoints.