As far as ‘jukebox films’ go, Mamma Mia! was a riot, Sunshine on Leith was tolerable, just about, while Walking on Sunshine is a step too far and brings the genre to its knees.It’s being billed as ‘the feel-good musical of the year’ although, bereft of a single original idea, ‘the feel-ennui musical of the year’ may be the better fit. Also, ‘I-feel-really-really-bored-and-quite-insulted-and-also-rather-repulsed-and-I-keep-checking-my-watch-in-the-hope-it-will-be-over-soon’ would cover it quite adequately.
Set to 1980s hits (‘Holiday’; ‘Don’t You Want Me’; ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’, etc.), it’s as if the screenwriter (Joshua St Johnston, who should be ashamed) and the directors (Max Giwa and Dania Pasquini; ditto) looked at Mamma Mia! and thought: ‘Let’s do that again, but make it horrible and bad and ill-considered. ‘It takes place in the sun-soaked Mediterranean, by the sea. There is a wedding that may or may not happen. There are set pieces in town squares and courtyards and what have you. There is no Julie Walters, but there is the comedienne Katy Brand, performing the Julie Walters comic role just as Greg Wise, who strains to sing when he so can not, performs the Pierce Brosnan role, with the added demand he play a potential rape scene, for comic effect. Laugh? If I’d have started I might never have stopped, but as I didn’t start, only flinched, and rechecked my watch, it was not exactly an issue.
Narratively, this is so banal it is, in effect, a Jackie magazine photo love story, filmed. It opens with Taylor (Hannah Arterton, sister of Gemma) arriving in Puglia, Italy, for the wedding of her sister Maddie (Annabel Scholey), who is getting married after a whirlwind romance. Her intended is Raf (Giulo Berruti), a hunk of the highest order, who seems unable to keep his shirt on, for some reason. But, oh no! What’s this? Taylor and Raf, it transpires, have history. They’d fallen in love three years earlier, while she was holidaying there. So it’s a flashback to them on the beach, saying ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too’ but Taylor was determined to return to England to attend university rather than follow her heart, the big silly. And so they must have lost touch, as is so easy to do, as no one these days has phones or email or Facebook or Twitter or Viber or Instagram or knows how to text, and who’s ever heard of Skype? Or EasyJet? At this point, you will hope, fervently, that Raf marries the wrong sister and they all pay for it for the rest of their lives but, of course, we are not let off the hook so easily.
There are the predictable misunderstandings. There are the intended funny moments which, 97 per cent of the time, involve pushing someone into a swimming pool. There are the musical numbers, performed without any sparkle or exciting choreography, which will make you think of sixth-form discos conducted against some Now That’s What I Call Music! compilation. There are the usual stock characters, so that anyone fat is a ‘joker’ and anyone ‘fat’ can only attract someone else who is ‘fat’. And there’s Leona Lewis, playing one of Taylor’s friends, who is the only true singer, yet isn’t given a single solo to sing. How does that add up? What is the point of Ms Lewis in this film? To act? Poorly? It would seem so although, to give her credit, she does appear to know it, and looks both uncomfortable and sheepish throughout. Honestly, I think my goldfish, Bubbles, could, given a camera, make a more intelligent, witty film, and we’ve yet to mention Doug. Doug (Wise) is Maddie’s ex, who wants her back. Doug says to Maddie’s friend Lil (Brand): ‘You’re a good friend because next to you Maddie always looks thin’ and — here’s what’s so horrible — we are meant to think this is charming. The film-makers intend this as charming just as, presumably, they think we’ll find it charming when Doug lies in wait for Maddie in her hotel room, so he’s there when she puts on the light, lying on her bed, and then chases her round while he murders George Michael’s ‘Faith’. Yet she likes him! OK, but in her defence, as every person in this film is thick and odious, in some way or another, what choice does she actually have?
So Walking on Sunshine is anything but. It’s more Walking on Broken Glass Until Your Feet Bleed. It’s about as upbeat and feel-good as that. Or, to put it in the words of Cher and the film’s finale, ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ … I just wouldn’t go.
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