After a few moderately successful flicks like 1990’s Memphis Belle and 1991’s Doc Hollywood, director Michael Caton-Jones worked pretty steadily through the 1990s. However, 2006’s flop Basic Instinct 2 must’ve messed with his head, as Caton-Jones didn’t direct another feature film until 2015’s Urban Hymn.

2019’s Our Ladies offers Caton-Jones’ follow-up to Hymn. Perhaps eager to relive his most fruitful period as a movie director, Ladies takes us back to the 1990s.

Set in 1996, we head to Fort William, a town in the Scottish Highlands. There we meet a group of Catholic schoolgirls who find themselves with the chance to go to Edinburgh to participate in a choir competition.

However, when the young women arrive in the big city, they find other experiences take precedence over their vocal duties. In this setting, booze and boys become their main preoccupation.

That synopsis may imply that the teen characters of Ladies start out as innocent and virginal but the urban setting corrupts them. However, the movie’s opening scenes make it clear that we meet them as horny and eager to ingest whatever alcohol and drugs they can find, so we don’t find the journey to debauchery one might anticipate.

Given that the girls start out this way, it makes one wonder what kind of plot path Ladies will take as it goes. Since the characters dig into drink, drugs and sex from the beginning, where can it proceed?

Toward a story about female friendship – sort of. Ladies doesn’t quite enter “coming of age” territory, but it gives us some vague development for the characters and some minor revelations.

Arguably the biggest surprise to occur here stems from the time span covered in the tale. Given the subject, I assumed the girls would spend a good week or so in Edinburgh and matters would develop over that span.

Instead, the story largely takes place over a mere afternoon. The students leave Fort William in the morning and get home by the evening, with the whole film set across a 24-hour period.

That doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for the expected drama, but Ladies attempts to pack in a mix of revelations – probably a few too many given the restricted chronology covered. Still, one expects a fair amount of drama from a tale like this – who would watch a more realistic movie about kids who go to the city?

Though based on Alan Warner’s 1998 novel, Ladies feels heavily influenced by 1973’s American Graffiti. Both films take place over one day and offer episodic glimpses of the characters’ adventures.

Heck, Ladies even offers a clear nod to Graffiti at its end, for it provides text to tell us what happened to the main roles down the road. Graffiti focused less on carnal pleasures, but the connection feels clear.

Ladies doesn’t work as well as the George Lucas classic, potentially because it obviously lacks the same autobiographical impact. Whereas Lucas gave us a glimpse of his youth, unless Caton-Jones was a teen girl in the mid-1990s, this seems impossible here.

Nonetheless, Caton-Jones makes Ladies more than watchable, even if it can feel scattered. The film never gets into a real groove, largely because it throws so many balls in the air.

As noted, Ladies comes with an awful lot of life-impacting moments given its time span, and the movie jumps around semi-awkwardly in terms of tone. It flits from broad comedy to emotional revelation to tawdry material with alacrity and it can’t quite connect those dots as smoothly as I’d like.

Still, the story moves at a good pace and seems more involving than such a slight tale should. Even with those revelations, this remains a narrative about a Big Day Out for some Scottish teens – that’s not exactly the most dynamic topic for a film.

Ladies manages to keep us fairly entertained, and the actors help. Because the movie comes with so many roles, few get much room to expand, but the performers allow them to seem pretty three-dimensional anyway.

All in all, Our Ladies doesn’t become a great coming of age tale, but it works well enough. I can’t help but wonder, though: do Scots really punctuate every other sentence with the word “wee”?

Our Ladies appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 2.39:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. This became a satisfactory presentation.

Overall sharpness seemed solid. A couple of wide shots looked a smidgen soft, but those were the exception to the rule, as the majority of the flick was accurate and detailed.

No issues with jagged edges or shimmering occurred, and I noticed no edge haloes. Source flaws were absent, as the movie looked consistently clean.

Like most films of this sort, Finding gave us an amber and teal-tinted palette, though nightclubs brought out broader tones. Within those parameters, the hues were positive.

Blacks seemed deep and dark, while shadows showed good smoothness and clarity. I felt happy with the transfer.

As for the DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack of Ladies, it lacked a ton of ambition. The soundfield focused on music and ambience, though it opened up on occasion, mainly in terms of the seaside material. Nothing especially memorable occurred, though.

Audio quality was fine. Speech seemed natural and concise, without edginess or other issues.

Music offered good clarity and range, and effects worked well enough. They didn’t have much to do, but they appeared reasonably accurate. All of this ended up as a perfectly satisfactory soundtrack for this sort of movie.

No extras appear here – not even previews.

As far as coming of age dramas go, Our Ladies brings a surprisingly limited scope, as the entire narrative takes place over a single day. Though it never dazzles, the movie brings a fairly entertaining look at its youthful subjects. The Bly-ray offers solid visuals and acceptable audio but it lacks bonus materials. This turns into a fairly winning character piece.