Keep eyes and ears away from 'The Ballad of Wallis Island'
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It’s not great when after just 10 minutes a main character causes the words “awkward weird pathetic creepy sad exhausting” to run through your head. Why why why did Charles (co-writer Tim Key) have to be the most annoying onscreen nuisance in a long, long time? He has Chris Berman’s sense of humor — if someone says pop, Charles says “goes the weasel”; he unironically says “Let’s get ready to crumble”; and his reaction to chutney is “Houston, we have chutney, and it’s not a problem.” Hopefully Peacock will release stats on how many people mute their TV and watch on closed captioning, if not turn off this rubbish completely.
The defense, I imagine, is that Charles remains emotionally adrift five years after losing his wife, and his painful stabs at humor — again, this man says “Wowzers in your trousers” out loud and is not, titular similarity aside, Wallace from “Wallace and Gromit” — are clearly a cry for help and companionship. Except "The Ballad of Wallis Island" isn't actually a movie about grief or a person who seems to be so lonely and spiraling that he's detached from social interaction to the point of discomfort. That would be a different story, and one worthy of empathy. Instead, this unsettling doofus is just like this all the time anyway, and it’s worse that he’s won the lottery twice and shows no interest in doing anything generous with the money.
Instead, he’s using his second winnings to pay for a private concert by the “bestselling UK folk-rock artist of 2014” McGwyer Mortimer, which means luring Herb McGwyer (co-writer Tom Basden) to a tiny place while seemingly providing few details. Never mind that the singer hasn’t spoken to his former partner and significant other Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) in nearly a decade, or that Mortimer’s married now. Because Charles’ late wife loved the band and we’re therefore supposed to be automatically moved by this gesture, regardless of how misleading and self-serving it is, or how it seems Charles has never heard any other music before, or that this band is pretty lousy (sample lyric: “Give your love, give your love to me”). Or that Charles calls Herb “Herbivore” and that the supposedly enormous tension and bitterness between McGwyer and Mortimer is practically non-existent or how cheaply the movie pushes her husband (Akemnji Ndifornyen) out of the way or how cliche and unexamined the eventual wedge between the previous pair turns out to be.
Directed by James Griffiths (the mediocre, fittingly forgotten “Cuban Fury”), “Wallis Island” is based on a short film that should’ve stayed that way. Clearly the goal is the sadly antiquated sort of low-budget cutesiness that used to turn little charmers like "Waking Ned Devine," or musically driven love stories like “Once,” into word-of-mouth hits. But that doesn't happen automatically just because you're in a remote place in Europe and trying super hard to be cheeky and maudlin. Herb references “Misery” and Nell mentions Fleetwood Mac, seeming to agree that the story is neither as innocent nor as juicy as it wants to be. Charles is somewhat pulling a soggy “Parent Trap” on people he doesn’t know, coming off as an overly enthusiastic superfan who needs help or at least a viewing of “Inside Llewyn Davis” and a long, long nap. Instead we get the only other woman in town (Sian Clifford) who of course Charles likes and somehow doesn’t loathe him and is invited to the concert without any consideration of why the event is being held. Everything is shameless and coated in pity and contrivance (Charles can’t swim? Herb’s staying this long?) and relentless manipulation.
It bears repeating: Key, who you may know as Pigeon Man from “Mickey 17,” is just almost indescribably bad. The examples are endless: Charles thinks Portland is the Windy City and says “Kathmandu was a case of Kathman-did,” and the performance makes the lines somehow worse. This is the first time in a long time that a movie featuring characters growing fond of someone who does nothing to earn it doesn’t star Adam Sandler. Meanwhile, Basden and Mulligan (whose career has been free of disasters like this until now) make it impossible to care about what happens to this former duo musically or romantically, as there doesn’t seem to be anything of value to save in either area.
There is no movie here. There are no characters who feel real, no music worth listening to, no emotions that are earned. There is one laugh, though: when Herb’s on the phone and we can’t hear the other line but eventually Herb says, “Saying my own name isn’t name-dropping.” So there: Three tolerable seconds. Otherwise: Pure muck, desperate and rough.
D-
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