Sunshine on Leith is a kind of 'Mamma Mia' for Scots twin brother folk/rock duo The Proclaimers - it strings a catalogue of their songs around a story of two soldiers returning from duty in Afghanistan. The opening, set in a personnel carrier where all the soldiers start to sing, is quite effective, except that it goes on far too long and the lead character is not established or marked out in any way.
Once that's finally over, I think we get a kind of soap opera of two or more families and their Mike Leigh-style problems; I'm not sure because there is a long, repetitive song shoehorned into every scene, which goes on and on in that inexorable Proclaimers way that the twins Craig and Charlie manage to make work live, but when it's performed (or mimed to) by drama students (none of whom can sing and act at the same time) mugging their faces off, the song outstays its welcome over and over and over again.
In every scene it's like some school production where the director said, 'well I know it's strictly not good drama, but you can all have a whacking great showstopper each, and we can all be great pals, OK?. Yes, even you, Peter Mullan, because no-one is to be left out'. The writer has just transferred River City to Andrew Lloyd Webber Hell. A TV soap script DOES NOT WQRK on the big screen, OK? After a while you start to imagine logos for advertisers drifting up on screen - SOL becomes like an endless series of outtakes from adverts for cider, as happy faces drift around glittering bars. The end may be good: it's isn't worth putting up with the first half for. You'll just want to change channel, like you do in the adverts.
Once that's finally over, I think we get a kind of soap opera of two or more families and their Mike Leigh-style problems; I'm not sure because there is a long, repetitive song shoehorned into every scene, which goes on and on in that inexorable Proclaimers way that the twins Craig and Charlie manage to make work live, but when it's performed (or mimed to) by drama students (none of whom can sing and act at the same time) mugging their faces off, the song outstays its welcome over and over and over again.
In every scene it's like some school production where the director said, 'well I know it's strictly not good drama, but you can all have a whacking great showstopper each, and we can all be great pals, OK?. Yes, even you, Peter Mullan, because no-one is to be left out'. The writer has just transferred River City to Andrew Lloyd Webber Hell. A TV soap script DOES NOT WQRK on the big screen, OK? After a while you start to imagine logos for advertisers drifting up on screen - SOL becomes like an endless series of outtakes from adverts for cider, as happy faces drift around glittering bars. The end may be good: it's isn't worth putting up with the first half for. You'll just want to change channel, like you do in the adverts.