Director: Dexter Fletcher
Starring: Peter Mullan, Jane Horrocks, George MacKay, Kevin Guthrie, Antonia Thomas, Freya Mavor, Jason Flemyng.
Running Time: 100 minutes
Certificate: PG
Synopsis: Davy (George MacKay) and Ally (Kevin Guthrie) struggle to adapt to contemporary society whilst confronting the strains of maintaining relationships and starting new careers after returning home from serving in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Davy’s parents reach an impasse in their marriage with the revelation of a secret buried deep within his father’s past.
Marking a substantial change of pace for his second directorial feature following the extremely likable and brilliant comedy-drama WILD BILL, Dexter Fletcher returns to the chair with SUNSHINE ON LEITH, a cinematic appropriation of the rousingly popular stage musical of the same name which is soundtracked by the music of The Proclaimers.
Moving as far away from WILD BILL’s gritty tale of council estate-dwelling youngsters’ coming of age and their dealings with patriarchal shortcomings, Fletcher here has the unenviable task of tackling Stephen Greenhorn’s firmly tongue-in-cheek yarn and making a story transparently tailored to the music of Scotland’s premiere purveyors of catchy pop palatable to a more diverse audience. This he does with brio, but a veritable trove of upbeat sincerity and toe-tapping song and dance numbers do little to mask a predictable plot and formulaic characterisation.
The film opens with Davy and Ally returning to Edinburgh after a stint serving in Afghanistan. Starting with a brief prologue inside a weathered army truck, their squadron gloomily hums ‘Sky Takes The Soul’ amidst the external sounds of battle. The film then cuts to their homecoming in picture perfect Edinburgh where, amidst a handful of nonplussed rubberneckers, they belt out ‘I’m On My Way’ on the sidewalks before finding their way back to their delighted respective families. Almost immediately the pair are confronted with the harsh realities of domesticity and the immediate demands of finding employment and putting their time in combat behind them – something Ally finds particularly troubling.
Something else the two firm friends have to contend with is the women in their lives and the toll being away has taken on their relationships. This is mainly felt by Ally, whose girlfriend – and Davy’s sister – Liz (Freya Mavor) is considering a career move to Florida to fulfil her ‘see the world’ agenda. Davy, too, faces his share of emotional turmoil when he is introduced to, and quickly falls for, Yvonne (Antonia Thomas), an English nurse whose time in Scotland may be drawing to a close. Meanwhile, Davy’s parents Rab and Jean’s (played by Mullan and Horrocks) marriage faces a crisis with the revelation of a secret buried within Rab’s past.
Much like other cinematic jukebox musicals (most recently Phyllida Lloyd’s unbearable MAMMA MIA!), SUNSHINE ON LEITH is guided by a story structure that is stapled to, and creatively evoked from, Greenhorn’s musicians of choice. This has allowed him to construct a set list that effectively but unsurprisingly governs where the characters go next as they sing about post-War life (‘It’s Over and Done With’), contemplate proposals (‘Let’s Get Married’) and face saying goodbye to a loved one (‘Letter From America’). ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’ is also inevitably belted out, twice, its lyrics utilised to ultimately summarise key messages.
As a musical, the film works – albeit on a conventional level – largely due to the efficient vocal abilities of the cast and Fletcher’s adeptness at maintaining a relentlessly upbeat, sometimes infectious joie de vivre; an amplified by-product from the notably smaller scale, homegrown WILD BILL. Yet what he fails to mask is the contrived nature of Greenhorn’s light-hearted creation and, by extension, the intricacies of the genre.
Where existing archetypes handle the segueing between dialogue and warbling with a degree of organic finesse, here the implication of musical interludes is sloppy and mostly awkward, making the already flat and simplistic dialogue seem even more jarring. Though it has many moments of notable weight (largely attributed to Mullan’s toned down, atypically soft performance), Fletcher’s sophomore directorial stint is as deliberately mawkish as its story is clichéd, offering little more than a diverting ditty to a Proclaimers aficionado perhaps looking for something more substantial.
SUNSHINE ON LEITH is released October 4th in the UK.
