WALKING ON SUNSHINE
DIRECTORS: Max Giwa and Dania Pasquini
CAST: Hannah Arterton, Leona Lewis, Giulo Berruti, Annabel Scholey, Greg Wise, Giulo Corso, Danny Kirrane, Katy Brand
CLASSIFICATION: 7PG L
RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes
RATING: 3 stars (out of 5)
Leslie Felperin
WALKING on Sunshine will leave audiences feeling warm, cheerful, sticky from too many sugary treats and slightly blinded by all the blazing colours.
British directors Max Giwa and Dania Pasquini have followed up their successful, urban-flavoured Streetdance films with this bouncy, mainstream-skewed jukebox musical about summer loving built around hits from the 1980s. Although the plot is thin, there’s enough ingenuity in the execution and sheer enthusiasm to drum up good word of mouth, especially among tweens and teens.
Shot and set in Italy’s Puglia region, the script begins with an introduction to nice English girl Taylor (Arterton) and her boyfriend, Italian hunk Raphael (Berruti). The two are enjoying the last days of their summer romance before Taylor goes off to university in the UK, and Raph goes travelling.
Fast-forward four years or so, and Taylor returns to Puglia, cueing a large-ensemble rendition of Madonna’s Holiday in the airport, complete with dancing air stewards and choreography involving escalators and baggage carousels which sets the tone for what’s to come. She’s there for the wedding of her sister Maddie (Scholey), who came to the region on Taylor’s advice to get over the latest split with her boyfriend Doug (Wise) but ended up falling in love with a local.
The fiancé turns out to be, of course, Raphael. Afraid of upsetting Maddie if they come clean about their past, the two pretend they’ve never met, a charade made more difficult by the fact that Taylor also knows all his friends, including English-Italian couple Elena (Lewis) and Enrico (Corso), and bartender Mikey (Kirrane) who takes a shine to Maddie’s bestie Lil (Brand).
Just to complicate things, Doug shows up hoping to win back Maddie, prompting a marketplace-set number to Human League’s Don’t You Want Me, Baby?, a song choice that was surely a no-brainer.
All the same, the film-makers and actors have found inventive ways to make the lyrics of the pre-existing tracks roughly fit the drama. The selection is main-stream pop, the sort of songs you’d find on one of those Now That’s What I Call the 80s compilations.
Although only Lewis and Corso are paid-up professional singers, the rest of the cast show off some impressive pipes even if the suspicion lingers that auto-tuning programmes played a significant role in the final mix. In terms of acting, Arterton has a sincerity that’s endearing and Berruti’s male model perfection compensates for his limitations as an actor. Wise is likeable despite the character’s shiftiness and Kirrane has some impressive dance moves.
– Hollywood Reporter
If you liked Mamma Mia! or Sunshine on Leith, you will like this.