Movie Reviews: Plenty black humour in Irish film, The Bright Side
Gemma-Leah Devereux as Kate McLoughlin in The Bright Side
Always look on the bright side of life, as the Monty Python chaps famously advised, but sometimes that’s more easily said than done. Inspired by Anne Gildea’s memoir , (16s) stars Gemma-Leah Devereux as Kate McLoughlin, a stand-up comedian recently diagnosed with breast cancer.
Already prone to depression, and now bordering on suicidal, Kate’s mood darkens further when she starts her chemotherapy sessions — the constant vomiting and hair-loss are bad enough, but Kate also has to contend with the abrasive Tracy (Siobhán Cullen), the religious Róisín (Barbara Brennan) and the well-to-do Southside Dubliner Fiona (Karen Egan). And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, her local pharmacist Andy (Tom Vaughn-Lawlor) suggests that the best way to cope with breast cancer is to go fly-fishing.
If the setup for sounds bleak, it’s meant to be: Ruth Meehan, who directs and co-writes with Jean Pasley, has no intention of playing breast cancer for cheap laughs, even if the central character is a comedian who incorporates her life-or-death struggle into her stand-up routine. There are plenty of funny moments, certainly, even if the humour tends to be of the black variety, but the comedy is subservient to an engrossing drama that explores the value of faith and the vital importance of having something — anything — to believe in.
Gemma-Leah Devereux is wholly believable as a young woman who finds herself staring, unblinking, down the barrel of imminent death, and she gets terrific support from those around her, with Tom Vaughn-Lawlor achingly vulnerable as the recently bereaved Andy, and Siobhán Cullen superb as the hard-as-nails Tracy, whose own cancer is the toughest lesson yet in the school of hard knocks. (cinema release)
(15A) opens in a post-apocalyptic world, where the planet's coastal cities have been flooded as a result of the climate change that occurred ‘after the war’. Nick Bannister (Hugh Jackman) is a futuristic private investigator, a man who can help his clients to not only retrieve buried memories, but to relive them as if they are real.
As hardboiled as they come, Nick’s cynicism is put to the test when the glamorous Mae (Rebecca Ferguson) walks into his office, asking him to help her remember where she left her keys. What follows is an unabashedly old-fashioned private eye noir complete with gravel-toned voiceover, as the femme fatale Mae lands Nick hook, line and sinker, and then pulls a disappearing act.
Can Nick, by reliving his own memories, discover a clue as to where Mae might have gone, and why? Written and directed by Lisa Joy, is a time-bending sci-fi that could easily serve as an homage to the films of Christopher Nolan. The world-building is superbly done — the long opening shot, as the camera tracks in across the ocean to reveal a half-submerged Miami, is a bravura piece of work — and Joy revels in creating a futuristic noir with strong echoes of .
But while the story is deliciously complex as Nick tries to figure out what is real from the fragments of his disorientated memory, the script itself is distractingly overwrought, with characters prone to (mis)quoting the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, investing fairly standard dialogue with all the gravitas of a Shakespearean fifth act, and, most irritating of all, repeating certain lines that Joy mistakenly believes deserve a second or even third airing. is a solid, intriguing sci-fi, but it could, with a little less, have been a whole lot more. (cinema release)
A movie-length spin-off from an award-winning BBC Three series, (15A) is a mockumentary about the weed-addled wannabes behind Kurupt FM, Brentford’s finest garage pirate radio station.
Long after the station has made its final broadcast, the boys’ manager, Chabuddy G (Asim Chaudry) discovers that his clients’ biggest track is wowing the fans of a Japanese game show. And so MC Grindah (Allan Mustafa), DJ Beats (Hugo Chegwin) and Steves (Steve Stamp) fly to Tokyo, where Taka (Ken Yamamura) is planning to make the most of the Kurupt boys’ 15 minutes of fame. What could possibly go wrong?
Pretty much everything, as the viewer will eagerly anticipate, given that was predicated on the hilarious ineptitude of the Kurupt FM stalwarts. Unfortunately, this is effectively a greatest hits affair that recycles long-running gags from the TV series [Grindah being unaware, for example, that Decoy (Daniel Sylvester Woolford) is his daughter’s father], while also offering rather stale examples of cultural confusion, such as when the boys recoil in horror from traditional Japanese cuisine and flee to the home comforts of the nearest McBurger. (cinema release)
