>>REVIEW
WAH-WAH
Written and Directed by Richard E. Grant
Alliance Atlantis Home Video, 2006
Divorce. Alcoholism. Infidelity. Wah-Wah runs the gamut of family dysfunction. Written and directed by actor and cult film fave Richard E. Grant, Wah-Wah is a fictionalized account of his childhood growing up in Africa as the son of a boozy British diplomat. Even with ripe dramatic situations and a powerhouse cast, the film is as problematic as the relationship between the characters.
Ralph Compton (Nicholas Hoult) has got worries and a nasty facial tic to go with them. At a young age he caught his mom (Miranda Richardson) in flagrante delicto with one of his father’s co-workers. Even so, it came as a bit of a surprise when she left Ralph in the custody of his dad Harry (Gabriel Byrne). Maybe it was the drinking. Harry may have had trouble keeping his wife around but he never had trouble keeping the liquor flowing. Still, Harry was a charmer and before long he landed another wife (Emily Watson), much to Ralph’s chagrin. As Ralph sets out to explore the world of acting he is forced to juggle his love for his absent mom, his frustration with his father and his concern for his new stepmom who gets verbally abused when drunk dad goes on a bender.
Set in Swaziland in the ’60s just before it earned its independence from Britain, Ralph’s coming of age is paralleled by that of his adopted country. That’s about as subtle as the film gets. Anyone who has read Grant’s Hollywood tell-all autobiography With Nails, knows he’s a great storyteller, but that book relied on his dry wit and a certain amount of ironic disbelief. Wah-Wah is sincere and obviously dear to his heart, but Grant fails to make it relevant to the audience.
Richardson breezes through the film in her patented detached mom role. Byrne may bear a striking resemblance to Grant’s real-life dad, but his performance is only slightly better than average. Watson, who almost never delivers a bad performance gets tongue-tied with Grant’s script.
In fact, it’s the script that is the biggest problem. The subplots are too disjointed and underdeveloped to resonate, the dialogue, while probably accurate in its vintage colloquialism is stilted, and the film overall is too episodic to have a compelling through line. It’s not a bad film or poorly made, but this is the kind of story we have seen thousands of times before. If Grant wants to explore his childhood, he needs to make it more significant to audiences. If he wants to add another film to the canon of alcoholic parent movies, he needs to do a better job. |
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