What We Did On Our Holiday

[Utter Shit]

Surprised to see there's no thread on this film given that it's by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin and was marketed as a film version of Outnumbered (albeit with a different cast). One of the oddest-toned films I've ever seen. For the first half an hour or so it really is just Outnumbered, then something SPOILERY happens and it turns right fucking weird.

Spoiler alert

The dying grandad, played by Billy Connolly, passes away having taken the three young children on a trip to the beach, and the kids decide to honour his jokey wish that instead of a big emotional funeral he be given a viking funeral. In the middle of this amiable, gentle and quintessentially British little comedy, the children LITERALLY BURN THE STILL-WARM CORPSE OF THEIR GRANDAD AND SEND HIS CHARRED REMAINS ON A RAFT OUT TO SEA. This actually happens. And the whole incident presented somewhere between being a hilarious farcical romp and a sort-of-bad-but-not-really-that-bad-they're-only-kids bit of oddness.

I don't think I've ever seen a film where the tone is so odd. The first half an hour is a nice little family sitcom on the big screen, the middle twenty minutes is a harrowing ordeal played for laughs, and the final act turns into a weird bit of TV drama with an inevitable and unbelievable happy ending - the social services come round with a view to taking the kids away presuming that they must have been brought up pretty badly to enter into a joint venture of BURNING THEIR GRANDAD'S BODY before any of them have hit their teens, then changes her mind and decides it will all be fine because she's impressed by the mum being rude to the journalists who come to cover the story.

There's also a sub-plot that has no reason for existing and still manages to be completely baffling despite only lasting about five minutes - one of the family who seems to be quite quiet and meek, turns out to have depression characterised by manic episodes, and again it's all over the place - one minute they're presenting her as a very sympathetic character seemingly pushed into depression by her overbearing husband, next minute the whole family are gathering around a Youtube clip of her finally snapping in the local supermarket and throwing bread and cheese at a fellow customer.

[close]

Worth seeing just for how odd it's presented to the audience. Not a good film nor particularly a bad film, just a weird film that makes little sense in terms of story and no sense in terms of tone. Also worth seeing because it's nice to see Billy Connolly in a role where he is basically playing himself, seemingly it doesn't look like it'll be long before he cops it so seeing him in a role like that made me a bit emotional as he was something of a hero of mine as a kid.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I saw a trailer, without paying attention to the writers, and it looked like it had shit written all over it.

I expect I'll see this when it arrives on telly on a bored Sunday afternoon in 18 months time.