Connolly and the kids teach us about life
The very old and the very young both have the stolid middle- aged telling them what to do, which makes them natural allies. British writers Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin ( TV’s Drop the Dead Donkey) clearly understand this, and they have thus cast an adorable trio of preteens alongside the irrepressible septuagenarian Billy Connolly at the heart of this family comedy.
There are proper mid- life grown- ups in the cast as well, most notably Rosamund Pike ( Gone Girl) and David Tennant ( Doctor Who). They are Abi and Doug, a recently separated couple who decide to put on a good familial face for the sake of his father Gordie’s 75th birthday, at the home of Doug’s stuck- up brother in the Scottish highlands.
But rest assured, these neurotic adults soon fade into the narrative background, allowing the children and Connolly to set up at centre stage and discuss life from their opposite yet oddly copacetic perspectives. Gordie, who is dying of cancer, recalls tickling Doug when he was little, hearing him squeal “no no no” while it lasted, and “more more more” as soon as it stopped.
“Which sums up how I feel about living,” he concludes sagely.
It’s an unexpected and delightful turn from a film that, on the face of it, looks like it’ll be about mom and dad falling back in love — perhaps with the help of Disney- esque machinations from their offspring — during a hair- raising road trip that would tear most couples apart. Even the film’s poster, with the six stars mugging on the beach, isn’t doing any favours to its original premise, which involves an unexpected tragedy from which there’s no easy recovery.
The children are good in their roles, which are just threedimensional enough to stand up on their own. Nine- year- old Lottie questions her parents’ demands that they lie to grandpa about their martial status; middle child Mickey shares a love of all things Viking with Gordie, who claims to be 84 per cent Norse. And Jess, aged four, has a pet rock named Eric — and a pet brick named Norman.
Getting short shrift is the kids’ cousin Kenneth, a budding fiddler and kleptomaniac whose coming- of- age story doesn’t quite mesh with the rest of the plot; and Annette Crosbie as a lesbian ostrich farmer ( she’s a lesbian; the ostriches are presumably straight), in a subplot that fails to hatch. Perhaps it’s the filmmakers’ background in TV that has them worried about filling out the background with wacky neighbours and the like.
But these are mild quibbles that do little to distract from the joyously heartfelt central story, which features Connolly in a role he plays so well. When he lets the kids take the wheel of his pickup during a jaunt in the countryside, they accidentally knock over a sign.
“Good job!” he cheers. “I’ve been trying to hit that for years.” They ask what it said. “Don’t let children drive.”