00:00Feel Good British comedy drama Mother's Pride feels like it was made after everyone had sunk
00:04a few pints, and hey, maybe it plays better that way too. One-hit wonder musician Jono Davies
00:09returns to the small village pub that drove his arms run by his brother James Buckley and father
00:15Martin Clunes, who hasn't forgiven Davies for missing his mother's funeral. With the pub in
00:19trouble and their taps dry, Davies tries to create their own ale to try and save the pub and restore
00:25its reputation by competing as a family at the Great British Beer Awards. This is the latest
00:30from the makers of the Fisherman's Friends films, director Nick Moorcraft and Meg Leonard,
00:34who wrote the script together and have effectively cornered the market on lightweight formulaic
00:39British comedy dramas. So formulaic, in fact, you could be uncharitable and suggest they've
00:43just copy-pasted the same movie over again. Mother's Pride is clearly inspired by current
00:48headlines about difficult times for pubs, with many closing across the UK and plays into old-fashioned
00:54cultural identity. It's all very predictable, and that's meant to be part of the cosy charm for the
01:00target audience anyway, but that's not really an excuse for the laziness of the writing. We know
01:06that Davies is eventually going to win back his former sweetheart Gabriella Wildeway from rival
01:11brewer and posh Pratt Luke Treadway, but does he have to be written as a one-dimensional villain
01:16and saboteur with no redeeming qualities, so it's inexplicable why she's even with him in the first place?
01:21But yes, there's lots of family drama and reconciliation, especially once they understand
01:26that Davies' brush with the excesses of fame has left him with mental illness, which is still
01:31affecting despite the clumsy writing. They also touch on ADHD with Buckley's daughter,
01:36played by Moorcraft's own daughter Lana, who the writing can't seem to decide if she's 15 or 5.
01:42It's largely blandly innocuous fare, aside from a few off-colour sex jokes, mostly from Lola Rose
01:47Maxwell's horny taxi driver because she's pansexual and down for anything, including a bit of dogging.
01:54Cut to the kid going, what's dogging? Yeah, that's the level here.
01:59Though the film works as well as it does, it's largely down to Martin Clunes' ability to elevate
02:03even weak material, Nativity 3 notwithstanding. But this comedy is badly lacking hops, as it's
02:10sloppily made and indifferently paced, with the opening section being especially awkward and weirdly bitter.
02:16Even the comedy business feels half-hearted, like a sort of subplot involving Shakespeare
02:21quoting drunken Mark Addy trying to do Morris dancing to disco music that doesn't go anywhere,
02:26and the film barely rises up to the level of polite chuckles.
02:30The most enjoyance I got out of this was trying to spot where in South West England they filmed this,
02:34recognising places like Bath. But especially funny is how the same stretch of road next to the Bristol
02:39Harbourside somehow unconvincingly doubles as both a rural police station and the centre of London,
02:45even though you can clearly see them past the Bristol Aquarium. I've got to be honest,
02:50that was probably the biggest laugh I had and it definitely wasn't intentional.
02:54No!
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