★☆☆☆☆
A feel-good movie that thinks it’s a comedy and ends up being neither.
I just watched this year’s (last year’s) Christmas movie, Tinsel Town, starring Keifer Sutherland*, Rebel Wilson, and a whole bunch of British actors you’ll know from half of everything you’ve seen over the last year.
It’s the story of a Hollywood action star, Brad Mac (Keifer Sutherland) who gets tricked into flying to England to star in a pantomime in the small Yorkshire town of Stoneford (suitably represented by the beautiful Knaresborough, which is about a half hour drive from where I live in central York).
The gruff, doesn’t-care-for-anyone-but-himself Mac is initially dismissive of the idea of pantomime, and of the people who play in it, and the people who live in the area, but over the course of the movie he learns how to be a decent person, how to take a joke, and how to be a father to his daughter who conveniently lives just a short train ride away. So far, so tropey. (And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a fun paint-by-numbers movie that offers few surprises, if it’s entertaining and fun.)
I love the concept. British pantomime provides the perfect backdrop for an American megastar in a fish-out-of-water story, but there was just so much wrong with this movie that I’m surprised I made it to the end.
First of all, a couple of very minor things: Rebel Wilson (who is otherwise fine in this, dodgy generic British accent aside) is the production’s choreographer. Anyone who has ever rehearsed a show knows that choreographers (in amateur as well as professional productions) are great dancers. They have to be in order to be able to demonstrate their vision to the dancers. Wilson is not a dancer — not by a long shot. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the director had chosen to not show her doing her job, but there are a number of sequences where she is required to dance and to inspire other dancers.
Also, there’s a (very minor) subplot about two of the actors in the show being in love with each other, but neither saying anything to the other, and that tension having built up over several years of performing in panto together. At the end they kiss, but nothing prompts it; they just realise they should be together with no prompt. This was such a waste of an opportunity to give Brad another way to signal his transformation, and allow him to show friendship and awareness of other people in his orbit. Even just having see them being awkward together and saying something along the lines of, “For god’s sake, you two, just kiss.” or even, “Do you love her? (nod) Do you love him? (nod) Then do something about it!” That would have tied up that (very loose) thread and made it relevant to the plot, which is Big Hollywood Star Realises There’s More To Life Than Him.
The transition from unsympathetic character to the panto hero that everyone loves is uneven. A movie like this needs the lead to be unlikeable for most of the running time, realising that life is better when you embrace fun and other people only toward the end (with a hint of light shining through sporadic cracks in the character’s armour every now and then to signal the eventual change of heart), but the character of Brad changes to early and too unevenly for the final transformation to bring the viewer satisfaction.
The supporting cast are mostly very good (Asim Chaudry and Jason Manford as the Ugly Sisters, Mawaan Rizwan as the hardest-working person in Yorkshire, Meera Syal as the panto director and Maria Friedman as the always-horny Brenda, Danny Dyer as the local hard man, Alice Eve as Mac’s ex-wife and James Lance as her new husband). I’ll mention Derek Jacobi, later.
There are two major things wrong. Firstly, the script is terrible (and with 6 writers listed, that’s perhaps not a huge surprise). Most of the characters are underwritten, with only the talent of the actors managing to give them any semblance of believability. And the direction is equally underwhelming. The main problem is that for a movie like this to work the actors must inhabit their roles and make us believe in them. Almost every role was written and directed to be a comedic role, but the comedy in something like this comes from the central conceit of a big star believing himself to be slumming it in an artform he doesn’t respect. Nothing wrong with having a daft comedy character if needed (hello, Rizwan — you fulfilled the brief, perfectly), but when everyone is funny, no-one is. The film itself is treated as a pseudo-panto and this undermines the lesson the film tries so desperately to impart. This is a wannabe feel-good movie, not a comedy, but it tried to be the latter with zero success.
Every role should have been played straight (even Manford and Chaudry as the dames, as they get plenty of opportunity to show their comedy chops during rehearsals and during the panto itself). The only performers who seem to have understood this are Wilson (poorly cast, but does what the character needs), Sutherland himself — in a reasonable send-up of his particular Hollywood archetype; this lead role was poorly written, but Sutherland managed to come out of it with his dignity intact; not a mean feat — and Derek Jacobi as the many-years-retired local dame, now working on the stage door because theatre will never not be in his blood. Jacobi somehow managed to find dignity and gravitas in a small supporting role that almost belonged in a different movie. (And another missed opportunity, here. One character-driven scene tells us that Jacobi’s character (Albert) gave up the theatre many years ago when his husband (literally) died on stage, but Albert can’t leave the theatre so he works on the stage door. How easy it would have been to write a scene where Mac manages to get Albert back onstage, even if only for a bow — another way to redeem Mac, and to give closure to a thread that was left dangling.
So. Tinsel Town. Decent performances, despite a terrible script (I did laugh twice, but if there were actually a 90 minute comedy I would venture an opinion that that’s probably not enough) and lacklustre direction from a director that didn’t seem to understand the story or the tropes contained within it. I can’t help but feel that when the dames in the movie refer to their star’s career (“It’s behind you!”) the director must have been inwardly grimacing, thinking it of himself. Although, judging by this work, he’s probably not that self-aware.
This could have been the season’s big small town feel-good movie, but it fell flat in pretty much every way possible. If I didn’t have two cats on my lap and a remote control too far away to reach I would have probably given up much, much earlier. Oh, yes I would!
This proves (if proof were needed) that which we already know — cats are inherently evil.
___
*and poor old Sutherland. The Sky Cinema summary reads:
Washed-up Hollywood star Keifer Sutherland joins an English village’s Christmas pantomime…
suggesting that it’s Sutherland who’s washed-up, instead of his character. It should, of course, say:
Washed-up Hollywood star Brad Mac (Keifer Sutherland) joins an English village’s Christmas pantomime…
Proofreading is important, people!
