Of the three big “grief movies” galloping into the awards race, this one is the hobbled donkey. The other two are Hamnet and H Is for Hawk, and their understanding and subtle expression of human suffering makes this showy Benedict Cumberbatch effort seem gobsmackingly trite.
Cumberbatch, mostly overdoing it throughout, plays a newly widowed London dad called, sigh, Dad (yes, it’s based on a book, but come on, is it that difficult to whip up a name?), who is struggling to raise his two boys, called, double-sigh, Boy 1 (Richard Boxall) and Boy 2 (Henry Boxall). Dad is one of those irksome movie men who can’t make toast, can’t pack school bags, can’t wash dishes or use a vacuum cleaner, and don’t know how zips work. Because these were the jobs of mum, called Mum (Claire Cartwright). And now Mum is dead.
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Dad is sad, and so are Boy 1 and Boy 2. They really miss Mum but don’t know how to purge their pain. Hmmm. If only there was a large supernatural creature, like the tree that Liam Neeson voiced in A Monster Calls, only crap, that could become a focus for Dad, Boy 1 and Boy 2 and allow them to finally express their grief in the kind of verklempt climax that’s unearned, mechanistic and phonier than a Hollywood air-kiss.
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The creature, a giant crow called, ugh, Crow, is voiced by David Thewlis and has no character function whatsoever other than to feature in tedious jump scares (he’s behind you!) and to litter the soundtrack with gravel-throated nonsense such as: “Yes, I’ve got him where he needs to be!” The Neeson character in A Monster Calls was a vital narrative driver who unearthed the darker sides of familial loss. This Crow is superfluous window dressing, like a dyspeptic Big Bird from Sesame Street, but boring.
Ultimately, nobody expected, say, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey to be any good, and it wasn’t. But this is a Max Porter adaptation, starring a two-time Oscar nominee and directed by the respected documentary film-maker Dylan Southern. When talented people make bad movies it hurts. And when they make hollow dramas crammed with ersatz emotions it’s almost unforgivable.
★☆☆☆☆
15, 104min
In cinemas from Nov 21
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