TALE WITH HEART AND SOLE!
It’s Cornish and a little bit corny, but these singing fishermen will soon reel you in
The Full Monty, Brassed Off, Calendar Girls, Pride, last year’s Finding Your Feet . . . there is a rich (some would say overly rich) tradition of crowd- pleasing British films depicting a rousing collective triumph against the odds.
Those odds can be social, cultural or economic. At first, they seem insuperable, but they are always worn down by old-fashioned British doughtiness.
The baddies in these films are usually crashing snobs, beastly prudes or greedy capitalists. Julie Walters, Imelda Staunton or Celia Imrie invariably pops up somewhere — the one surprise here is that none of them does.
Otherwise, Fisherman’s Friends belongs to this hallowed tradition like battered haddock belongs to vinegar-doused chips.
With lashings of dramatic licence, it tells a true story, that of a troupe of proud Cornish trawlermen who sang sea shanties for fun, until a musicindustry executive heard them and fancied they might have some commercial potential. Knowing beforehand that the Fisherman’s Friends, as they called themselves, ended up signing a lucrative recording deal — and in 2011 even performed at Glastonbury Festival — does not diminish the mild pleasures of director Chris Foggin’s film.
In any case, it signposts its own trajectory from the beginning. When Danny (Daniel Mays), an
Fisherman’s Friends (PG) Verdict: Not brill, but cod be worse ★★★✩✩
What Men Want (15) Verdict: Brash, crass comedy ★★✩✩✩
oafish cor blimey Londoner on a stag weekend in Port Isaac with record company colleagues, says early on that he doesn’t believe in monogamy, you don’t need to be Mystic Meg to know he’s going to fall head over heels in love.
And that it might even be with the pretty local woman who initially thinks he and his friends are arrogant city-slickers, just as Danny thinks she and her fellow townsfolk are worthless seaside bumpkins The object of his con condescension is Alwyn (Tuppence Middleton), a single mum who shares a home with her young daughter and her father, Jim, leader of the musical mariners.
A crabby seadog with an accent as broad as the Camel Estuary, he is improbably played by James Purefoy, who is urbane and handsome enough to have screen-tested for James Bond. But somehow, Purefoy pulls it off. None of the casting can be faulted. The same is not quite so of the screenplay — by Nick Moorcroft and Meg Leonard, who co-produce (and also co-wrote Finding Your Feet), and Piers Ashworth.
It rather groans and clunks its way through a series of misadventures that befall the stag weekenders, mostly involving their wholly predictable failure to give the unpredictable briny the respect it deserves.
The trawlermen, you see, are lifeboatmen, too. And, while Danny doesn’t wear a badge proclaiming himself a fish out of water, he might as well.
Soon, though, after hearing the fishermen singing their shanties, he is hoodwinked by his objectionable American boss into signing them up. It’s just a prank — his boss doesn’t think for a second that they could have a recording future. But Danny does.
The rest of the film charts his single-minded efforts to get them a deal and his improbably rapid rejection of his old friends, lifestyle, values and, indeed, personality.
In the meantime, Danny succumbs to the charms of Port Isaac in general and the lovely Alywn in particular. His success in the romance department ebbs and flows with the tide, however, especially when he disgraces him bumpkins. self in a daft sub-plot concerning the local pub.
In further deference to moviecritic law, which deems maritime metaphors obligatory in all reviews of films about the sea, let me add that this isn’t the only whalesized contrivance intended to give Fisherman’s Friends’ narrative momentum. And Cornish clichés encrust the script like barnacles.
On the other hand, I can’t deny that I sauntered out of the screening of this clunky, sometimes clumsy, but redeemingly engaging and warm-hearted film with a smile on my face.
Unlike the powerful throat lozenge with which it shares a name, it is appealingly bland.
Moreover, Foggins never loses sight of the need to seduce us, just as do Poldark and Doc Martin on TV, with shots of Cornwall that will make you wonder why you ever bothered holidaying on the Costa Brava . . . before you remember that it was the weather.
WHAT Men Want will make you ask questions of yourself, too. Chiefly, why didn’t you stay at home?
It is a brash, crass comedy, inspired by the 2000 film What Women Want, which starred Mel Gibson as a sexist advertising man who, after acquiring the ability to hear female thoughts, duly becomes a better, more empathetic human being.
HERE, the premise is flipped, with Taraji P. Henson giving a gurning, wildly over-the-top performance as Ali, an ambitious, loud executive at an alpha-male sports management agency in Atlanta, who is passed over for promotion on the basis that she doesn’t connect with men.
This is ironic, because Ali — named after the ultimate heman by her boxing coach father (richard roundtree) — operates more like a testosterone-fuelled male of the species than a female. Wham, bam, thank you sir, is her approach to sex.
But, following a visit from a psychic, in whom she confides her inability to relate to the men around her, and then a bang on the head (with Mel Gibson, it was electrocution), she finds she can hear what the fellas are thinking. This changes everything.
Whether you’ll be happy to have parted with a tenner or more to find out how is another matter.