Dir: Nick Moorcroft. With: Jonno Davies, Martin Clunes, James Buckley, Mark Addy. 93 mins. Cert: 12A
The Fisherman’s Friends team have found a modestly profitable post-Brexit niche: tales of culturally endangered Anglo-Saxon endeavours, nudged towards gentle uplift via a few songs and laughs, dollops of sentiment and some rabble-rousing populism. First it was half-forgotten sea shanties; now it’s the dwindling pub trade, represented here by rival West Country premises. On one streetcorner, spit-and-sawdust local The Drover’s Inn, overseen by salt-of-the-earth (read: emotionally repressed) widower Martin Clunes, slowly being strangled by his grasping brewery’s supply chain. On the other, that same brewery’s poncy gastropub, owned and somewhat implausibly operated by posho Luke Treadaway, introduced sipping from one of those teeny cappuccino cups issued as standard to all metropolitan elites.
The scene may have shifted indoors – gone, alas, is the Cornish scenery – but the formula remains much the same: clunky exposition, upper-case Issues, variably groansome dad gags. Tension emerges between Clunes and prodigal son Jonno Davies, until the latter proposes a radical idea to save the business: homebrewing. Davies has an awkward reunion with old-flame Gabriella Wilde, who’s now shacked up with Treadaway, doubtless eating swan for breakfast. But the resolutions really are arbitrary: it takes barely ten minutes for the villager who sabotages the microbrewery to crowdfund its replacement, a rapid U-turn even for Starmer’s Britain. Co-writer/director Nick Moorcroft must be praying audience sympathy for rickety, no-frills structures like the Drover’s will extend to the film itself.
The cast nurdle matters along to the climactic Real Ale Awards, scene of recent cinema’s least surprising surprise result. Clunes at least troubles to cobble a character together out of whatever was set before him, while Mark Addy – as the town drunk – commits gamely to an asthmatic running gag involving disco-infused Morris dancing. Josie Lawrence and Miles Jupp, briefly glimpsed, could have improvised a funnier film between them. Would-be cheeky nods to TikTok and dogging are delivered in the manner of a backbench MP, and there surely has to be a stronger case for preserving our pubs than “last refuge for middle-aged depressives”. Ken Loach and Paul Laverty almost made it with 2023’s The Old Oak, but Moorcroft’s mild variant is weak beer, to say the least.
Mother's Pride opens in cinemas nationwide today.
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