No flies on me

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, anyone who happens to be passing, I have decided to quiz myself about this week’s film, for no other reason than the idea occurred to me, and I fancied it, so here goes:

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, any good?
No.

That it?
OK, if this film teaches us anything, it teaches us how to take a perfectly fine book — Paul Torday’s novel of the same name — and transform it into a mushy, corny, ghastly mess of the most trying kind.

How would you describe the viewing experience?
Like swimming upstream yourself, but through treacle, and with someone heavy strapped to your back.

How heavy?
Someone like Eric Pickles, say.

I wouldn’t like Eric Pickles strapped to my back, I don’t think.
I know someone who did once have Eric Pickles strapped to her back, and as she now says, ‘Never again, and never mind swimming upstream through treacle. I couldn’t even get round Asda.’

Hard work, then?
Bloody hard work, this film.

How so?
An important question — well done, you! I think it’s because it just doesn’t know what it is.

But it has good credentials, right?
Indeed. The director is Lasse Hallström (Chocolat). The screenwriter is Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire). But at some point one or other or both unwisely decided to excise almost all the political satire from the book, and, as the book is predominantly a political satire, and an absurdist one, this left them with what exactly? A romance? A comedy? A New Age fable about faith and togetherness? It never knows, which means?

It’s not much of anything?

Hallelujah! You have learnt something over the years!

Can we have the synopsis now, as is the form?
Fair enough.