Canine caper amounts to a real dog’s dinner
Patrick
PG cert, 94 min Dir Mandie Fletcher
Starring Beattie Edmondson, Tom Bennett, Ed Skrein, Jennifer Saunders, Emily Atack, Adrian Scarborough, Gemma Jones, Meera Syal, Cherie Lunghi, Peter Davison, Bernard Cribbins
Patrick harks back, woefully, to the big-budget British romcoms of yesteryear. It stars Beattie Edmondson, daughter of Jennifer Saunders and Adrian Edmondson, as Sarah, a neurotic flibbertigibbet who works as an English teacher. Recently dumped, she faces further indignity when she inherits her late grandmother’s unpredictable pug, the titular Patrick.
Patrick eats clothes and slippers and defecates in wacky places, but also has a seemingly strange ability to turn around Sarah’s fortunes. She meets an allegedly charming dog owner while out walking her new pet, and with Patrick’s bug-eyed help bonds with her new gobby students.
It’s not an unpromising premise. But director Mandie Fletcher feels uncertain of what tone to strike, or who her film is aimed at. Edmondson is all huffy exasperation, overplaying every scene, while Tom Bennett as her love interest is mumbly and humourless. Bernard Cribbins pops up as a grouchy old-timer, as does Saunders, struggling valiantly for laughs as a teacher whose one joke is that she’s always armed with a box of desserts.
There’s a jarring cruelty to the film’s humour – Sarah is surrounded by monstrous individuals who attempt to belittle her at every opportunity. Toss in a scene of ghastly racial stereotyping and Patrick is less a modern version of a Richard Curtis classic, and more a very creaky TV sitcom.