In these gloomy times of Brexit uncertainty, it’s tempting to cling to anything that constitutes a cheeky couple of fingers up to English authority. However, Whisky Galore! is hardly the howl of protest some of us may be in need of right now. Indeed, if the two films that bookend the festival – Tommy’s Honour opened – are anything to go by, Scottish cinema is as edgy as a Möbius Strip.
Alexander Mackendrick’s 1949 Ealing original, based on the novel by Compton MacKenzie was timely, set as it was during rationing, and tapping into a genuine lack as a boat load of whisky miraculously runs aground off a small Hebridean island a few weeks after the locals’ supply runs dry. Here, in these gluttonous times, it becomes a one joke comedy. That joke being, us Scots like a drink.
Gregor Fisher, as the island’s postmaster and chief whisky filcher Macroon, mined that rich vein of humour for years as Glasgow’s chief piss-artist philosopher, Rab C. Nesbitt. He plays Macroon with a mixture of Machiavellian cunning and foggy-eyed pathos, as a widower on the brink of losing his two daughters to marriage. Up against him is Eddie Izzard, as bumbling, pompous Captain Wagget, determined to catch the aqua vitae aficionados in the act. Ramping up his officious, imperialist Englishman voice so beloved in small doses in his standup, he quickly becomes unbearable over an elongated period, and you expect him to break away from his lines and into his usual flights of stream-of-consciousness, tangential whimsy. He’s sadly one of the big flaws.
The other is despite featuring a fine supporting cast of reliable character actors, it’s genial, overtly undemanding stuff. Any drama is dialled down to the merest ebb lest it test the quivering heart of the pensioners who are likely to be the biggest audience, and the farcical test of wits between Wagget and the islanders has all the brio and hilarity of an episode of Last of the Summer Wine; a later one, after the cast had lost their youthful athleticism.
Okay, there is not so much wrong with Whisky Galore! (barring the completely undeserved exclamation mark) that it won’t beguile a Sunday evening crowd. It fulfils its intentions completely, and director Gillies MacKinnon makes lavish use of the gorgeous surroundings of Portsoy, Aberdeenshire, filling in for his fictional island. It just sends a vibrant, diverse and exciting festival out with a whimper instead of a bang. It’s competent, genial and pretty. It’s just really quite dull.