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★★★½☆
5 November 2018
A movie review of HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD. |
"I’m helping by not helping," Colin (Neil Maskell)
Extended family meltdowns, surely most of the audience can sympathise? Those addicted to drama adding fuel to the fire. As one character comments, "If you get them on their own, they are pretty nice people". A family made up entirely of black sheep. As a collective, we are presented with a largely comedic baying mob. HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD falls between FESTEN and THE PARTY. A gathering of family and friends goes awry. Not in the same league (and darkness) of the former, and far superior to the execrable latter.
Extended family meltdowns, surely most of the audience can sympathise? Those addicted to drama adding fuel to the fire. As one character comments, "If you get them on their own, they are pretty nice people". A family made up entirely of black sheep. As a collective, we are presented with a largely comedic baying mob. HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD falls between FESTEN and THE PARTY. A gathering of family and friends goes awry. Not in the same league (and darkness) of the former, and far superior to the execrable latter.
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While the tonal adjustment from laughing-through-your-fingers awkwardness moves towards sad revelations (which have been threatening to reveal themselves all evening), the hotchpotch atmosphere doesn't quite come across as coherent and satisfying. The audience is left with a melancholy feeling that is incongruous to the first half. Life isn't one note. Happiness and despair intermingle. You thus have to admire the film's avoidance of simple emotions. One could argue it represents the category of party that starts euphoric and ends with tears.
The skill of HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD is the continual shifting of sympathies. Hilariously, all the characters end up being twats. It is rare, usually there is at least a single port to relax with. Here, we are dropped straight in, to work out who is related to whom. It starts off feeling like ace Icelandic road comedy COUNTRY WEDDING (2008), about two families travelling in coaches to nuptials.
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Gordon (Bill Paterson) and Bertie (Charles Dance) are not the patriarchs, even though they are the oldest. Gordon's eldest son, Colin (Neil Maskell), has usurped the position. As the most successful, arrogant and manipulative, Colin enjoys the crown. Typical of the family, he does not know himself. Over the course of the evening, leading up to the count down, everyone gets a shocking look at themselves. Trite yes, mostly funny also. Though, there are some half-baked dour notes. A character is contemplating suicide, was going to leave a note, but his phone runs out of batteries. Gallows humour, or insensitivity in this relatively enlightened age of mental health awareness?
The last three flicks from director Ben Wheatley have underwhelmed (FREE FIRE, HIGH-RISE, A FIELD IN ENGLAND), in contrast to his first three (SIGHTSEERS, KILL LIST, DOWN TERRACE). This sorta falls between the two camps. If one was to make an analogy, HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD is to DOWN TERRACE (2009), as THE HATEFUL EIGHT (2015) is to RESERVOIR DOGS (1992). HAPPY NEW YEAR is a return to a cantankerous family dynamic in a confined space, and the director demos what he has learned since: Orchestration with aplomb.
Wheatley is comfortable juggling a large ensemble, even if his verve behind the camera is not always top notch. The opening has that tired pseudo-fly-on-the-wall-documentary jitteriness, which one thought had been jettisoned as hackneyed. The camera calms and the actors take centre stage without superficial distraction. There are lots of Brit thesps you might recognise:
Charles Dance (GAME OF THRONES),
Asim Chaudhry (PEOPLE JUST DO NOTHING),
Joe Cole (A PRAYER BEFORE DAWN),
Hayley Squires (I, DANIEL BLAKE),
Peter Ferdinando (HYENA),
Doon Mackichan (TOAST OF LONDON), etc etc
HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD has chortles and observations, but not quite enough of either.
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