Director: Ellen Perry
Starring: Damian Lewis, Bob Hoskins, Perry Eggleton, Steven Gerrard, Jane March
Running time: 102 mins
Certificate: U
Synopsis: Eleven year old Liverpool fanatic Will has had a rough break. His mother is dead, and when his estranged Dad finally returns, complete with two tickets to LFC’s Champions League Final, he goes and kicks the bucket too. Will becomes a run away, risking everything to cross Europe and see his team play in Turkey against AC Milan.
There are some labels in cinema that a director just can’t shake, and the ‘underdog’ cattle-brand is one of them. After squeezing funding from Turkish investor Galeta Films, family football movie, WILL, simply couldn’t find a distributor, causing much online gum flapping about the need to support independents. Jay Weston dubbed it ‘the wonderful movie you may never see.’ And through the will of the people, mainly LFC fans, the film garnered a word of mouth following that secured its survival with Vertigo films.
Just one problem, WILL is not a wonderful, triumphant indie movie. With Damian Lewis on the bill as Will’s father, and Bob Hoskins as the gentle landlord, it had a fighting chance, but the baggy script ruins a great opportunity and the forced feel-good style reaches new sickly heights. Imagine a toffe apple, battered in marzipan and served by Peppa Pig in a Liverpool scarf. It is essentially a mawkish advertisement for the football club, complete with cameos from Steven Gerrard and Kenny Danglish.
Will presents itself as a child’s film for all the family, but takes irrational plot turns. As he ambles across Europe Will has a few inexplicable lucky breaks. He meets Alek, who just happens to be a one time Yugoslavian football star, disheartened with the sport. On their cheery road trip to Istanbul, they make a stop in Bosnia, where Alek’s tragic back story leads us into murky civil war territory.
Where did that Disney feel go? Not to worry, we can sing our troubles away with the boys in red to ‘You’ll never walk alone’. And never mind that Will’s dad is a stiff, there he is, glistening on the pitch. And there’s his mum too, in a white dress, swirling beneath a cherry blossom. Even Lilly and James potter didn’t try to shoehorn a cherry blossom into their posthumous scenes.
The film has a distinctly 90s feel, reminiscent of child ‘secret society’ movies like A FEAST AT MIDNIGHT (1995). The boarding school break out scene is a child only zone, and with a very funny performance from a Ritchie (Brandon Robinson) we get a taste of the warm family movie this aspired to be. Will has been touted along the same lines as SON OF RAMBOW, and had Ellen Perry been as passionate about football as Gareth Jennings is about 80s movies, it may have stood a chance.
And now for an selection of terrible football puns we couldn’t bring ourselves to include:
‘An own goal for Ellen Perry’.
‘Will gets a red card from the hollywood news’
‘Perrys third directorial project misses the hatrick.’
‘Worra loada balls, but at least it has Smee in it.’
WILL is out this Friday, 4 November 2011.
