Butler's Cinema Scene

Left to right: Sam Swainsbury, James Purefoy, David Hayman, Dave Johns

“FISHERMAN’S FRIENDS”  My rating: B-

112 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

With its seaside locale, eccentric characters and general sense of whimsey, the Brit “Fisherman’s Friends” bears not a little resemblance to Bill Forsyth’s sublime “Local Hero.”

Not that it’s nearly as good as that 1983 classic. But when you’re stuck at home during a pandemic, this little movie might be just the spirit lifter required.

Chris Foggin’s film was inspired by real events…and it’s sometimes painfully obvious which aspects of the yarn (it was written by Piers Ashworth, Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft)  were rooted in reality and which in Screenwriting 101. Nevertheless, it will be a churlish sod indeed who fails to respond to the movie’s charms.

Here’s the poop: A decade ago a bunch of Cornish fisherman rose to the top of the UK charts with a record of authentic sea chanties sung in impeccable 10-part harmony. This film purports to tell us how they were discovered and made the unlikely journey to pop stardom.

Music industry hustler Danny (Daniel Mays) has come to quaint Port Isaac, Cornwall, as part of a bachelor party for one of his co-workers. There the wise-ass city boys come across a gang of singing fisherman;  as a practical joke Danny’s colleagues order him to sign these blue-collar troubadours to a record deal.

What starts as a joke turns into a quest for Danny, who falls under the spell of the music, the town’s ambience, the garrulous seamen and especially the young divorced mother (Tuppence Middleton) in whose B&B he takes up temporary residence.

Tuppence Middleton, Daniel Mays

Here’s the thing. “Fisherman’s Friends” rarely surprises.  From the get-go we know how it’s all going to work out. Things unfold predictably to a happy conclusion.

Under normal circumstances this would be a source of criticism.  Right now, though, it’s like a big plate of comfort food.

The cast is crammed with weathered journeyman actors like David Hayman and Dave Johns; the usually matinee-idolish James Purefoy goes gray and grizzled to portray the grumpy leader of the group.

Holding it all together is Mays, an unlikely leading man with a face like a Christmas pudding that, in the right light, almost looks handsome. He plays the fish-out-of-water card for all its worth as the London toff plopped down among the hoi polloi.

“Fisherman’s Friends” was such a hit in the UK that a sequel is now in the works.  Hopefully it will be ready for the next global crisis.

| Robert W. Butler