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Wah-Wah (Richard E. Grant, U.K.)
Wah-Wah is a coming of age story set against the backdrop of the end of an age. Ralph Compton (played by Zachary Fox in the opening minutes, then About A Boy's Nicholas Hoult as the character ages) lives in Swaziland, the small country in southeast Africa. It's the late 1960s, just before the kingdom took back its independence from the British. Ralph's father (Gabriel Byrne) is in the foreign service, assigned chiefly as a teacher of English, and has a chest full of medals for his work. His wife (Miranda Richardson) has grown weary of their post, and weary of her husband. As the movie opens, young Ralphie pretends to be asleep in the back seat of the car as his mother commits adultery in the front seat. His parents divorce soon after, Mom leaves, and Ralph chooses boarding school rather than stay home with his father, who has taken to drinking very heavily. When Ralph returns a couple years later, he learns his father has remarried a loud American former stewardess (Emily Watson), and Ralph tries to deal with his broken family the best way a fifteen-year-old can.
This a thinly-veiled autobiography from the writer/director Richard E. Grant (well-known actor from Withnail & I, The Player, L.A. Story, etc.). While the subject matter is obviously very personal to him and most of the individual scenes feel authentic, as a narrative it doesn't quite work. The pacing and tone are off, and frankly he tries to cram much too much into one-hundred minutes. The result is too choppy, and comes off more like a beautifully photogrphed TV movie. Byrne has some nice moments as the alcoholic father who was kind and charming by day and a monster at night after a bottle of Scotch, and some of the supporting cast does some good work too, especially Julie Walters as a family friend and the wife of the man Ralph's mother ran off with. Nicholas Hoult, who was so good in About A Boy a few years ago, has hit a tremendous growth spurt since then and is over six feet tall now (you can also see him in last year's dud The Weather Man with Nic Cage). He's also a darn good young actor. Ralph is darker and different from that shy misfit who kept politely pestering Hugh Grant. I'm sure all the things that happen in Wah-Wah are based on the emotional high and low points Richard Grant experienced as a boy, but he needed somebody with more distance from the material to edit it for him, show him how to condense all those incidents into a cohesive story that flows and characters that come off as more than just types. It's a heartfelt first effort, but less than the sum of its parts.
GRADE: C+
Wah-Wah (Richard E. Grant, U.K.)
Wah-Wah is a coming of age story set against the backdrop of the end of an age. Ralph Compton (played by Zachary Fox in the opening minutes, then About A Boy's Nicholas Hoult as the character ages) lives in Swaziland, the small country in southeast Africa. It's the late 1960s, just before the kingdom took back its independence from the British. Ralph's father (Gabriel Byrne) is in the foreign service, assigned chiefly as a teacher of English, and has a chest full of medals for his work. His wife (Miranda Richardson) has grown weary of their post, and weary of her husband. As the movie opens, young Ralphie pretends to be asleep in the back seat of the car as his mother commits adultery in the front seat. His parents divorce soon after, Mom leaves, and Ralph chooses boarding school rather than stay home with his father, who has taken to drinking very heavily. When Ralph returns a couple years later, he learns his father has remarried a loud American former stewardess (Emily Watson), and Ralph tries to deal with his broken family the best way a fifteen-year-old can.
This a thinly-veiled autobiography from the writer/director Richard E. Grant (well-known actor from Withnail & I, The Player, L.A. Story, etc.). While the subject matter is obviously very personal to him and most of the individual scenes feel authentic, as a narrative it doesn't quite work. The pacing and tone are off, and frankly he tries to cram much too much into one-hundred minutes. The result is too choppy, and comes off more like a beautifully photogrphed TV movie. Byrne has some nice moments as the alcoholic father who was kind and charming by day and a monster at night after a bottle of Scotch, and some of the supporting cast does some good work too, especially Julie Walters as a family friend and the wife of the man Ralph's mother ran off with. Nicholas Hoult, who was so good in About A Boy a few years ago, has hit a tremendous growth spurt since then and is over six feet tall now (you can also see him in last year's dud The Weather Man with Nic Cage). He's also a darn good young actor. Ralph is darker and different from that shy misfit who kept politely pestering Hugh Grant. I'm sure all the things that happen in Wah-Wah are based on the emotional high and low points Richard Grant experienced as a boy, but he needed somebody with more distance from the material to edit it for him, show him how to condense all those incidents into a cohesive story that flows and characters that come off as more than just types. It's a heartfelt first effort, but less than the sum of its parts.
GRADE: C+