Movie Reviews: Finding Jack Charlton is joyous and deeply affecting
Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey with Forest Whitaker as Jeronicus Jangle
You mightn’t think that (PG) would pose too much of a problem.
After all, the gangly Leeds Utd centre-half won the World Cup with England in 1966, before going on to lead the Republic of Ireland to its first ever European Championships and World Cups.
In this documentary, however, it is Jack Charlton himself who cannot find Jack Charlton: diagnosed with dementia, unable to remember to take his coat off let alone remember his achievements, the man who once bestrode the game like a colossus is here reduced to a frail, forgetful and occasionally fearful shadow of his former self.
But if the scenes of Charlton shuffling around at home under the watchful eye of his wife, Pat, are heartbreaking, the documentary itself, directed by Gabriel Clarke and Pete Thomas, is a hugely absorbing patchwork of old football footage and interviews conducted down through the years, when Charlton was not only lucid but trenchantly forthright on a range of subjects.
A number of talking heads, including Roddy Doyle, Bertie Ahern, Larry Mullen, and an unrepentant Eamon Dunphy, offer their take on the Charlton era.
Although the most poignant contribution is that of Paul McGrath, for whom Charlton became a surrogate father during the years in which he battled with depression and alcoholism.
The context goes far beyond football, with Larry Mullen, in particular, emphasising the extent to which Jack Charlton’s influence caused a sea-change in how Ireland perceived itself on the international stage, and not only provided the country with a welcome distraction from recession and the Troubles, but a wholly unexpected shot of self-confidence that still reverberates today.
‘A battler,’ is how Charlton once self-deprecatingly described himself as a footballer, ‘a destroyer.’ Finding Jack Charlton begs to differ, arguing that Charlton’s ‘simple and direct’ style of football played a significant part in creating a new Ireland. The result is a magnificent film that is by turns uplifting, joyous and deeply affecting.
(12A) opens in 1997, in the hill county of rural Kentucky, with the young JD Vance (Owen Asztalos) determined to discover why his family moved from their Appalachian idyll to urban Ohio.
Fourteen years later, JD (Gabriel Basso) is at Yale when he gets a call from his sister Lindsay (Haley Bennett): their mother, Bev (Amy Adams), has OD’d on heroin.
Travelling back to Ohio, JD begins to reminisce about his childhood, and the tempestuous family life he experienced during his formative years.
Adapted by Vanessa Taylor from JD Vance’s memoir, and directed by Ron Howard, Hillbilly Elegy pulls few punches as it depicts JD’s troubled relationship with his mercurial mother.
Bev’s relationship with JD’s beloved Mamaw (Glenn Close) plays a significant part in the story: a foulmouthed, uncompromising and flinty-hearted old woman, Mamaw finds herself torn between her fidelity to the idea of family and the need to separate JD from his mother if he is to have any chance of making a success of his life.
What follows is a riveting drama of a family more dysfunctional than most, as JD rides the rollercoaster of his mother’s moods.
It’s a role that should garner Close her eighth Oscar nomination, and might even see her finally taking it home.
Festive offering (G) centres on Jeronicus Jangle (Forest Whitaker), a lonely old inventor whose solitude is rudely interrupted when his brilliant young granddaughter, Journey (Madalen Mills), comes to stay for Christmas.
Can Journey help Jeronicus to reclaim his legacy from the perfidious assistant, Gustafson (Keegan-Michael Key), who once stole Jeronicus’ most brilliant invention?
An all-singing, all-dancing production that offers a nod to Willy Wonka, Jingle Jangle is a slight but charming affair that is occasionally undermined by poor dubbing in the musical numbers, but otherwise delivers a sweet-natured Christmas fable of rebirth and redemption.
The blend of live action and animation is neatly achieved, and while few of the performances warrant special mention, the always watchable Forest Whitaker makes for a delightful curmudgeon as he does his level best to out-Scrooge Scrooge.
