Calendar Girlsis a 2003 British comedy film directed by Nigel Cole. Produced by Touchstone Pictures, it features a screenplay by Tim Firth and Juliette Towhidi, based on a true story of a group of middle-aged Yorkshire women who produced a nude calendar to raise money for Leukaemia Research (subsequently Blood Cancer UK) under the auspices of the Women’s Institutes in April 1999 after the husband of one of their members dies from cancer. The film stars an ensemble cast headed by Helen Mirren and Julie Walters, with Linda Bassett, Annette Crosbie, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton, Geraldine James, Harriet Thorpe and Philip Glenister playing key supporting roles.

• A Women’s Institute chapter’s fundraising effort for a local hospital by posing nude for a calendar becomes a media sensation.
• Middle aged Chris Harper (Dame Helen Mirren) and Annie Clarke (Dame Julie Walters) are best friends. They spend much of their time at their local Knapely, Yorkshire County chapter of the Women’s Institute (WI), whose motto is “enlightenment, fun, and friendship”. Although they like most of the women at the WI (the friendship part), they, but the perceived flaky Chris in particular, hold the way Marie (Geraldine James), the local President, runs the chapter with derision. They find much of what goes on there, especially the monthly presentations, banal and devoid of enlightenment and fun. Equally as banal was last year’s fund-raising calendar, featuring local bridges, which raised a meager £75.60, with this year’s proposed calendar, local churches, promising to be even more so. After Annie’s husband John (John Alderton) dies from leukemia, Chris wants the WI to provide a memorial in his memory: a new sofa for the family room at the hospital. The one Chris wants to buy costs nine hundred ninety-nine pounds sterling, which she proposes to raise by changing the fund-raising calendar to one featuring tasteful photographs of nude Knapely WI members. She got the idea by seeing all around her the notion of the old adage that sex sells. Annie likes the idea as it is analogous to one of horticultural-loving John’s last statements about plants being the most glorious in the latter stages of their life, after which they quickly go to seed. To get the project off the ground, they not only have to convince nine other WI members to pose (December to be a group photograph), but they have to find a photographer they trust that will treat this task as an art project. Conversely, they aren’t sure if they and the calendar will meet with the same contempt from Marie, the national WI organization and their friends and family that they are so trying to change in the Knapely WI, and in the process not only not raise the necessary money, but, in fact lose money instead. or the project in any form may have its own consequences, especially for Chris.—Huggo
• This movie is about the women of the Rylstone Women’s Institute in North Yorkshire. This Women’s Group produces a calendar each year based around scenes of the Yorkshire dales. In 1999, one of the ladies husbands became ill with leukemia. He would say that if the ladies planted sunflowers, he’d make sure he’d get better so he could see them. Unfortunately, he didn’t pull through and in order to raise funds for Leukemia research the women decided to make an alternative calendar of themselves in the nude hoping to sell a few hundred copies around their villages. This calendar in fact became a worldwide sensation, out-selling even those of Britney Spears and Cindy Crawford.—Steve Mappley
• In the small town of Knapely, Yorkshire, England, Annie Clarke (Dame Julie Walters) has just lost her husband, who was ill with leukemia. Inspired in his speech to the local Women’s Institute, where he said that “the flowers of Yorkshire are like the women of Yorkshire”, and “the last phase of the women of Yorkshire is always the most glorious”, her best friend Chris Harper decides to make a calendar with twelve local middle-age women nude to raise funds for the wing of leukemia treatment in the local hospital. The calendar becomes well succeeded, making them famous and affecting their lives.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Based on a true story, eleven middle-aged Englishwomen pose nude for their annual Women’s Institute calendar as a fund-raiser for the local hospital. Chris (Helen Mirren) gets the idea to raise money for the hospital after Annie’s (Julie Walters) husband dies of leukemia. The calendar is a little different in that each woman is posing behind a different task that the Women’s Institute teaches their members, such as making bread rolls, knitting, planting flowers, and playing the piano. Before they know it, the calendar is a big hit in England with tremendous sales. Eventually, they are flown to American to be interviewed by Jay Leno. The calendar has made almost a million dollars for the local hospital. Douglas Young (the-movie-guy)

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A charming, but cliched comedy reminiscent of The Full Monty.Read Critics Reviews

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Nigel ColeDirectorHelen MirrenChrisJulie WaltersAnnieJohn AldertonJohnLinda BassettCoraAnnette CrosbieJessie

Calendar Girls is a terrifically entertaining comedy –WHAT CAN I SAY?This charming film provides more genuine, out-and-out laughs than almost any comedy of recent times. `Calendar Girls’ is heartwarming, touching and inspiring with Julie Walters and Helen Mirren head a wonderful cast, with Walters as a woman whose husband dies of leukemia and Mirren as her best friend who comes up with the idea of the calendar as a way of both honoring his memory and raising money for the local hospital.