SUNSHINE ON LEITH
DIRECTOR: Dexter Fletcher
CAST: George Mackay, Kevin Guthrie, Freya Mavor, Antonia Thomas, Peter Mullan and Jane Horrocks
CLASSIFICATION: 10PG
RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes
RATING: 3 stars (out of 5)
David Rooney
WHO COULD resist what appears to be half the population of Edinburgh gathering in front of the Scottish National Gallery to perform The Proclaimers’ rousing declaration of love, I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), as a flash mob-style production number?
Such moments of ebullient joy explode throughout Dexter Fletcher’s film of the local stage hit Sunshine on Leith. Shamelessly contrived in the manner of most jukebox musicals, and more than a wee bit precious, the movie has little use for emotional shadings as it flogs its feel-good charms. But given the hordes that sat through Mamma Mia! without cringing, that might not be a deterrent.
However, The Proclaimers aren’t Abba and there’s no cavorting Meryl Streep here.
But the songs of identical twins Craig and Charlie Reid have more going for them than just catchy pop hooks. Becoming The Proclaimers in 1983 after cutting their teeth in high school punk bands, the Reid brothers built their initial following playing pubs. Those roots are evoked in screenwriter Stephen Greenhorn’s adaptation of his 2007 homegrown stage musical, created for Dundee Repertory Theatre. The songs thrum with proud national identity and raw feeling, be it plaintive or euphoric, which makes it disappointing that too many of them here are coated in generic sentiment.
The film starts strongly, with a combat-zone scene in Afghanistan during which UK soldiers in an armoured vehicle face possible death while singing a stirring a cappella version of Sky Takes the Soul. That visceral opening jumps to Edinburgh two months later, where squadron chums Davy (Mackay) and Ally (Guthrie) have returned from active duty, ready to reclaim their lives.
The abrupt shift from claustro-phobic mortality to freedom and possibility is captured as the two map out their path “from misery to happiness” in one of the band’s biggest hits, I’m On My Way.
This disarming introduction shows Fletcher comfortably embracing the old-fashioned notion of characters bursting into song within a naturalistic frame. It also sets the emotional stakes high for Davy and Ally, given the experience behind them and the fact that one of their mates wasn’t so lucky.
But as the returned soldiers reintegrate into civilian life, much of that edge evaporates from the film, making way for familiar romantic situations.
Ally dives headfirst back into his relationship with Davy’s sister Liz (Mavor), who sets up her brother with her English best friend and fellow nurse Yvonne (Thomas). Alongside this quartet are Davy and Liz’s parents, Rab (Mullan) and Jean (Horrocks), approaching their 25th wedding anniversary in blissful harmony until a discovery from Rab’s past rocks the boat.
Greenhorn breathes some credibility into Liz’s uncertainty about committing full-steam-ahead with Ally, contrasting his urgent desire to build a home and family with her itch to broaden her horizons. But the conflicts that stretch out the film’s midsection mostly feel manufactured, particularly for Yvonne and Davy. While the naturalness of the four young actors compensates, the writing is thin.
It’s dispiriting to watch a gifted actor like Mullan reduced to playing clichés, and as people who squirmed through Little Voice will recall, a smidgen of Horrocks’s winsomeness goes a long way. (I prefer her in the lunatic mode of Bubble on Absolutely Fabulous.) She does, however, make touching work of the lovely title song, its unadorned expression of sorrow, regret and gratitude resonating as Jean sings by a hospital bedside.
Generally, the intimate numbers like Sunshine on Leith or Letter From America are more effective than the strained exuberance of the expansive song treatments, with the happy exception of 500 Miles.
Dance elements have a pleasing rough-edged scrappiness to them, but jolly pub sing-alongs like Over and Done With and Let’s Get Married, or Should Have Been Loved, led by a mugging Jason Flemyng, made me wince.
That’s not to say there won’t be plenty of audiences eager to check their cynicism at the door and get on board with the unabashedly romantic spirit.
But the musical could have used more of the restraint that’s shown in the use of beautiful instrumental versions of Proclaimers songs as underscoring.
As for the crisp, clean visuals of pristine city architecture under pastel skies, Sunshine on Leith could double as a Scottish tourist board commercial.
A curious footnote: Fletcher, whose first feature as director was the well-received 2011 crime drama Wild Bill, began his career as a child actor in 1976 in another idiosyncratic UK musical, Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone. – The Hollywood Reporter
If you liked Mamma Mia or Hairspray you will like this.