What We Did On Our Holiday (12A.)
Directed by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkins.
Starring David Tennant, Rosamund Pike, Emilia Jones, Bobby Smalldridge, Harriet Turnbull and Billy Connolly. 95 mins
Nothing quite shrinks expectations than the prospect of a comedy drama from BBC Film written and directed by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkins, featuring kids and Billy Connolly. Hamilton who is a writer of numerous sitcoms and an ornamental attachment to most Radio 4 comedy panel shows, strikes me as being the master of GPS humour, crafting jokes that take the shortest and most obvious route from set up to punchline. This first bash at film making has a story about a divorcing London couple with three children heading up to Scotland for the 75th birthday party of his genially irreverent grandfather. How could this be anything other than horrible?
As it starts you can almost see the edges of the screen being pulled closer together to form a sitcom comfort blanket. Tennant and Pike are the sitcom couple trying to hold it together and fake everything is OK between them while Ben Miller and Amelia Bullmore are the other side of the family who are hosting the event and want to make sure that everything goes perfectly. Everything is tied up in twee little knots but somewhere in the middle it suddenly rears free of its shackles and prowls off into some totally unexpected and interestingly dark territory.
It repeats the trick that worked so well for them on TV with the sitcom, Outnumbered. Basically they let the kids run wild. While the adult roles are scripted the child performers – Jones, Smalldridge and Turnbull – have license to make up their own lines. It's a smart move, by sabotaging their GPS they end up somewhere they couldn't have hoped to find on their own.
By the end the sitcom certainties have reasserted themselves and everything is safely wrapped. But for a while there this summer holiday really went somewhere and even Billy Connolly was rather wonderful.
Directed by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkins.
Starring David Tennant, Rosamund Pike, Emilia Jones, Bobby Smalldridge, Harriet Turnbull and Billy Connolly. 95 mins
Nothing quite shrinks expectations than the prospect of a comedy drama from BBC Film written and directed by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkins, featuring kids and Billy Connolly. Hamilton who is a writer of numerous sitcoms and an ornamental attachment to most Radio 4 comedy panel shows, strikes me as being the master of GPS humour, crafting jokes that take the shortest and most obvious route from set up to punchline. This first bash at film making has a story about a divorcing London couple with three children heading up to Scotland for the 75th birthday party of his genially irreverent grandfather. How could this be anything other than horrible?
As it starts you can almost see the edges of the screen being pulled closer together to form a sitcom comfort blanket. Tennant and Pike are the sitcom couple trying to hold it together and fake everything is OK between them while Ben Miller and Amelia Bullmore are the other side of the family who are hosting the event and want to make sure that everything goes perfectly. Everything is tied up in twee little knots but somewhere in the middle it suddenly rears free of its shackles and prowls off into some totally unexpected and interestingly dark territory.
It repeats the trick that worked so well for them on TV with the sitcom, Outnumbered. Basically they let the kids run wild. While the adult roles are scripted the child performers – Jones, Smalldridge and Turnbull – have license to make up their own lines. It's a smart move, by sabotaging their GPS they end up somewhere they couldn't have hoped to find on their own.
By the end the sitcom certainties have reasserted themselves and everything is safely wrapped. But for a while there this summer holiday really went somewhere and even Billy Connolly was rather wonderful.
