Predictable, cliched, unrealistic and a total throwback, but what a pleasure, after Petite Maman, Everything Everywhere, and Crimes of the Future, to  see a movie that made us cheer, laugh and cry, all on cue. Jennifer Connelly is a treat on the eyes, Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise, the supporting cast, led by Jon Hamm, is fun. Moral issues about war are minimized by never naming or showing the, literally, faceless enemy. In fact, despite all the action shots of aerial dogfights, the bigger enemy is the military bureaucracy. We can all unite against that!

A “love story” without chemistry set in a fairly bleak future world where public surgery to remove spontaneously growing extraneous organs is the hot ticket. This resembles a George Saunders short story or a Remedios Varo painting on steroids. Director David Cronenberg is the master of the “body horror” genre. One has to wonder why, other than a bizarre personal obsession, this exists.

No surprises and nothing original, but in managing to tie up multiple stories with happy endings for everybody–and I mean everybody–Julian Fellowes brought a few tears to my eyes and gave us a pleasant afternoon in the movie house. Everything was a bit pat and no scene lasted more than its allotted 60 seconds; it was also helpful, maybe essential, to have the back stories of all the characters firmly in mind. But the residents of Grantham Hall have been good company for many years, and they didn’t let us down.

It felt like an art museum, the Watteau gallery in particular, with soldiers parading and lovers dallying. By adapting a classic play, the movie suspended disbelief and even made the songs feel integral to the plot, which they were. Peter Dinklage, of course, is not a traditional Cyrano, but again, we weren’t looking for realism once we fell under director Joe Wright’s spell. This also allowed us to cast aside contemporary feminism and appreciate the dutifully shallow Roxanne. It’s a matter of taste, but we found Cyrano sweet, especially when viewed on a theater big screen.