Dir: Jack Spring. With: John Bradley, Richard E. Grant, Celia Imrie, Sophia Di Martino. 98 mins. Cert: PG
The annual drive to expand the festive film canon begins unseasonably early with a modest, sentimentally inclined Britpic that opens like a penny-pinching John Lewis ad and thankfully improves from there. The titular Mr. Flint (John Bradley) is a Napoleonic history buff whose animus around late December dates from seeing his (French) mother perish under tinsel; now he spends the holidays caviling at carolers and insisting that the icy pavements of his native York come with health-and-safety warnings. This very much not being the kind of film to confirm a fellow in such beliefs, Aubrey is instead nudged towards a developer-targeted retirement community planning one last theatre production: the OAPs’ choice – A Christmas Carol – all but closes the book on where Jack Spring’s film is headed.
The real hero here is casting director Lucy Amos, gathering familiar faces who deserve their Christmas bonus for making a formulaic narrative seem far livelier than it is; atop a mince-pie frosting of sugar, we get a welcome sprinkling of comic stardust. Sure, you may struggle to identify Richard E. Grant beneath the frizzy wig-and-‘tache combo that transforms his toy shop owner Mr. Hopkins into a modern Geppetto, but the care home alone gifts us Dave Johns as a former manager, Kiell Smith-Bynoe gardening under Karl Pilkington’s ever-irascible eye, and such eminent residents as Celia Imrie, Brian Bovell and Nigel Planer, whose eventual Ghost of Christmas Present forms a funny little coda to the Nicholas Craig story.
Collectively, these old pros stage a show of fellow-feeling which Dickens himself might have cheered, and while Chris Boyle-McQuarry’s script mostly runs on familiar tracks, potent little tangents suggest the creatives have themselves known amateur players and mirthless administrators in their time. The upcoming Ebenezer surely won’t match Jim Broadbent’s sporadic narration (you’d pay for the audiobook), while Imrie’s impromptu Scrooge audition shakes off cosiness and reconnects us forcefully with a foundational text. What Spring builds on these highlights is basically Costcutter Capra, but his stronger scenes form their own sort of advert for how good, well-synched performers can rescue a project from mediocrity. Even before Aubrey Flint’s inevitable redemption, that’s quite touching in itself.
Merry Christmas Aubrey Flint opens in selected cinemas today.
No comments:
Post a Comment