by Annette Basile
Worth: $8.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Alan Cumming, Brian Cox, Shirley Henderson, Alexandra Shipp
Intro:
... little drama and no comedy.
Pretty countryside, a voiceover reading a letter, twee music – Glenrothan has barely begun and the cliché alert has already gone off. Unfortunately, things only get worse.
Brian Cox (Succession’s patriarch Logan Roy) is Sandy, who runs his family’s 200-year-old whisky distillery in Scotland. His estranged brother Donal (Alan Cumming) lives in Chicago, playing jazz in his own club, Donal’s Dive. When the club burns down, Donal decides to join daughter Amy (Alexandra Shipp) and granddaughter Sasha (Alexandra Wilkie) to visit Sandy.
Forty years have passed since the brothers have seen each other and it’s a fairly frosty reunion, particularly on Donal’s side. Their story is told in flashbacks, revealing a loving mother, a stern father, and a romance that Donal abandoned.
Shirley Henderson – the one shining light in this film – plays the present-day version of Donal’s old flame, Jess, who works at the distillery.
Penned by actor/writer David Ashton and Jeff Murphy, Glenrothan walks a worn and predictable path – as do many films, but it does so with faux warmth and zero real emotion. And the dialogue is inane (example: “Be careful with time Amy, it’ll creep up on you like a shitstorm”). Donal’s daughter and granddaughter are mere afterthoughts – their characters so flimsy that they may as well not have been included, while Donal – whose eyes we largely see the story through – is self-centred and unlikeable.
Billed as a dramedy, there is little drama and no comedy. Filmed on location in Scotland, Cox makes his directorial debut with Glenrothan, but there was only so much he could do with the poor material. At best, this film is patchy. There are a few decent moments – a flashback scene to a family drama, an early musical scene in Donal’s club, plus those scenes where Henderson gives her all – but it’s not enough. Pretty scenery, though.
