But the line also serves as a way of pre-empting any criticism that could be headed in the direction of this cute whodunnit about a band of amateur mystery-solvers living in a plush retirement complex.
Joyce, for instance, is all about the chintz, with pastel-pink living quarters that could have been interior designed by Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter, while fellow club member Ron (Pierce Brosnan) is the cuddliest trade unionist to have ever burned charcoal in a brazier.
His best pal is psychiatrist Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley), a man so buttoned-up he’s become one with his bowtie and tweed. And chief clue-finder is the redoubtable Elizabeth, an ex-spook as scrubbed and stylish as Jackson Lamb is filthy and slovenly.
But as a piece of filmmaking, The Thursday Murder Club is cleanly rather than cinematically directed by Chris Columbus, to the extent that it feels, as Joyce suggests, like its story ought to have been told across several episodes of a series rather than in a single movie.
But risk has never been part of the business of cosy crime, as what viewers crave in projects such as this is reassurance, along with enviably picturesque environs and the odd credible twist.
Helen Mirren talks "the team getting back together" for The Thursday Murder Club sequelsThe Thursday Murder Club's Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan are this week's cover stars
Here, some of the complexities of the original novel have been streamlined or dropped, a move that benefits some (Naomi Ackie’s PC Donna De Freitas) but shortchanges others (Henry Lloyd-Hughes’s Polish handyman Bogdan).
Yet this is not quite a land of lost content, as retrieving the movie from the realm of total make believe are some touches of pathos which, although not as potent as on the page, are still affecting.
Still, a couple of hours spent in the company of the key quartet is never less than comradely, and with a bookshelf full of subsequent cases just waiting to be dramatised, it's unlikely that we've seen the last of our feisty famous four.
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