‘Sometimes Always Never’ must-see quirky Brit fun
An English family comedy striking serious tones and featuring a very likable Scrabble side angle, “Sometimes Always Never” sounds like the title of the recent abortion drama “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” (welcome to my personal hell as keeper of the film schedule). The title “Sometimes Always Never” refers to suit jacket buttons and how to use them as protagonist Alan Mellor (Bill Nighy), a Scrabble enthusiast and widowed tailor, explains. The film, which is uniquely quirky, is in love in general with the English language and in particular with the names of four Greek letters, which are two-letter words and are allowed in Scrabble. Please meet Mu, Pi, Nu and Xi. Use them.
Alan has two sons, one named Michael, who stormed out of the family house during a game of Scrabble and has not been seen since. The other son, Peter (Sam Riley), has felt neglected because Alan has been obsessed with finding out what happened to Michael for years.
In opening scenes set in some remote part of the country, Alan and Peter meet a couple named Margaret and Arthur played by first-rate British veterans Jenny Agutter and Tim McInniny. They also have a missing son. The two families are at a David Lynchian hotel awaiting their summons to the police morgue to identify a body. To pass the time, Alan challenges Margaret, to whom he is attracted, and Arthur to a game of Scrabble.
Upon returning to the family’s hometown, Alan invites himself to stay with estranged, but willing Peter and his lovably nutty wife, Sue (Alice Lowe of “Sightseers”). Alan tries to make contact with his computer game-addicted grandson Jack (Louis Healy). He fixes
Jack’s buggy computer and introduces Jack to fine clothing and hairstyling (he makes the boy look boy band-ready).
These are useful upgrades to Jack, who is courting a pretty schoolmate named Rachel (Ella-Grace Gregoire). Alan and Jack share Jack’s bedroom, and its bunk beds. But when Peter catches Alan having sex with the separated Margaret (you knew she’d be back) in his and Sue’s bed, enough is enough. He sends his dad packing in his vintage red Triumph convertible (Peter drives a convertible Saab).
The screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce (“Goodbye Christopher Robin”) is replete with words and their synonyms (vocabulary, lexicon, word horde; awkward, disquieting, unsettling) and pop culture references (“Quadrophenia,” anyone? How about a Dalek?).
Alan is challenged to an online Scrabble showdown by someone pseudonymously named Skinny Thesaurus. Alan is convinced it is Michael. Sue parks at a bus stop to tell made-over Jack he is “spruce” in front of Rachel. Alan prefers The Small Faces to any of today’s music. Did you know Marmite is banned in Canada because it won’t identify an ingredient?
Director Carl Hunter, who has experience making documentaries, tosses in stopmotion and animation scenes just for fun. Alan tells Jack a bedtime family-history story about a seam of coal in the basement of Jack’s grandmother’s grocery shop. The wallpapers are mostly awful. There is a sailboat dubbed “Nauti-buoy.”
Bonnie Tyler’s “It’s a Heartache” becomes this quest film’s sad, but catchy meme. Alan is lured by Scrabble-esque clues into a forest, where he finds a scene resembling Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” with Nighy as Max Von Sydow’s Chaucerian knight.
Will the mystery of Michael’s disappearance be solved? It’s worth finding out. It helps if you like Scrabble.
(“Sometimes Always Never” contains mature themes and sexual references.)