Who doesn\u2019t love Fisherman\u2019s Friends? The 2019 feelgood Brit-com about sea shanties and Cornish pluck, written by Nick Moorcroft, was so successful, making \u00a38.6 million on a shoestring budget, that the film-makers essentially made the same movie again in 2022, this time calling it Fisherman\u2019s Friends: One and All. That one, alas, was not half as successful (\u00a33.5 million). <\/p>\n
Never mind. Moorcroft and co, like the scrappy stars of their jaunty yarns, are built of sterner stuff and they\u2019ve remade Fisherman\u2019s Friends one more time \u2014 only now it seems as if they\u2019ve asked a large-language model AI to rewrite the screenplay but to replace \u201csea shanty\u201d with \u201cbeer\u201d and \u201crecording contract\u201d with \u201cbeer-making licence\u201d.<\/p>\n
So off we go again, to a small impoverished English town, this one in Somerset instead of Cornwall, where a group of mostly penniless and disenfranchised lads are in desperate need of a focus, a talent, a skill \u2014 anything \u2014 that will bring them together, teach them that life is worth living and send them up to \u201cthat London\u201d for a climactic and financially rewarding finale. Hmm. Anyone tried beer making?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It stars Jonno Davies, who played the CGI monkey version of Robbie Williams in A Better Man. Good for him. The supporting cast includes Mark Addy, talisman of The Full Monty, James Buckley from The Inbetweeners and Gabriella Wilde (Tatler magazine\u2019s \u201csecond most eligible girl in Britain\u201d, 2007) as the completely disposable love interest.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s full of telegraphed \u201ccomedy\u201d, ersatz emotions and daytime telly twists. Please, marketing people, stop calling these films \u201cEaling-style comedies\u201d. Ealing made dangerous, audacious films such as The Ladykillers, The Lavender Hill Mob and Kind Hearts and Coronets. This barely qualifies as content.<\/p>\n