REVIEW - SUNSHINE ON LEITH

A cosy stage musical adaptation from director Dexter Fletcher, with quaint Celtic familiarities that elicited a few smiles from me, and a surfeit of other familiarities that elicited apathy, then ennui. With forewarning that Sunshine on Leith is a heartwarming musical (though you'll hardly need it - its intentions are plain from the off), these familiarities are initially comforting, and Fletcher is an adequately shrewd director to fill his screen with interest, be it thoroughly banal or otherwise (there's not a lot of otherwise in this film). Either he runs out of tricks pretty early on or their effect is short-lived, as it soon becomes no more than a catalogue of The Proclaimers songs; their insertion into the plot is smooth, but that's perhaps more because Stephen Greenhorn's storylines have been made bespoke for the lyrical content of these songs, resulting in an eccentric mix of over-directness and a fumbling vagueness, as we attempt to discern quite how this line or that line applies in context. Never mind, because who's coming to see this film for the plot? People will see it for the music, and no doubt it'll be a joy for those for whom these songs represent a specific moment in their lives... yeh, it's 100% not-from-concentrate nostalgia. To my ears, however, I just heard the same few songs played over and over, and while none were especially bad, none were especially good either. The direction, particularly in the modestly-choreographed musical scenes, is rough around the edges, which would have worked were it not for the film's professional visual and sonic sheen, and the sickening over-optimism that cuts through it all like a biting Edinburgh breeze.