This story is so absolutely daft in its central idea that it's hard not to love it. It seems Leonardo da Vinci used some special alien paint from his fellow painter Giuseppe di Cattivo (not a real person) when he was painting (one of the copies of) the Mona Lisa, which somehow imbued the subject with life, after a sort.
209 And when it gets close to another painting painted with that paint, it becomes alive somehow and starts terrorizing people. As I said, it's daft, but they're clearly having so much fun with it that it's easy to be carried along with the spirit of things.
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The Mona Lisa needs Mr. Harding's help to find her "brother".
(Mona Lisa's Revenge Part Two) ©BBC |
This is definitely a good thing, because there's not actually enough story to sustain this over two episodes, so we get a long segment at the beginning about Clyde winning an art contest and then a number of chases sprinkled throughout. But all the actors are very comfortable with their roles -- the regulars are all on top form (well, except for Luke's odd stammering insistence that they don't need Sarah Jane's help -- he's had a row with his mum, see) and clearly very comfortable in each other's presence, and all the guest stars are just as committed. Jeff Rawle (who you might remember as Plantagenet in
Frontios) does a fabulous job as the head of the International Gallery, Lionel Harding, who's both enamoured with the Mona Lisa and terrified of her when she comes to life. ("I told them security had to be improved here," Harding laments after he thinks someone has stolen the
Mona Lisa. "I told them, after that Cup of Æthelstan fiasco at Easter," he adds, thus definitively placing this after "Planet of the Dead".) And Suranne Jones is clearly having a blast as the Mona Lisa, threatening people with a Sontaran blaster she plucked out of a painting and generally having a good time putting people into paintings and trying to locate her "brother" (painted with the same paint), di Cattivo's
The Abomination -- a painting so terrifying you can't even look at it. The only odd thing is that Jones plays this in (presumably) her native Mancunian accent, which sounds incredibly strange coming out of an Italian painting. But after a while you sort of get used to it.
There are lots of fun moments in
Mona Lisa's Revenge -- the Dark Rider stalking Clyde, Rani, and Luke through the Gallery is a memorable image, but the sight of the Mona Lisa sticking her hand outside, only to see it turning to paint -- meaning she's still trapped, albeit in a larger space than before -- is really well realized. And while the resolution is slightly odd (K-9 comes in to blast the Abomination away), Miss Trupp's utter rejection of Harding ("Mona Lisa dumped you, did she? ... Oh, I heard you. 'Mia bella.' That trollop imprisoned me, and you were all over her. You, you art tart!") is a great touch.
It's great to see this story so confident and self-assured in its own oddness that it doesn't feel the need to accommodate the viewers or meet them halfway.
Mona Lisa's Revenge is a charmingly bizarre tale that treats its subject as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and for an hour we believe them. It's not an overtly flashy or gimmicky tale, but it's still a roaring success.
209 We have to assume that only one of the seven copies of the Mona Lisa (see City of Death if you've forgotten about the multiple versions) was painted with the alien paint, or else there would have been enough around to have activated it. Bad luck that it was the alien paint version that survived the fire at Count Scarlioni's in 1979.