What We Did on Our Holiday

Dir: Andy Hamilton, Guy Jenkin

2014

**

Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin are great writers and on paper, What We Did on Our Holiday is a wonderful story. The two writers aren't great directors though and this is one of the worst examples of film editing I have seen for a very long time. However, story wins over editing. Unfortunately, the acting ruins pretty much everything else that is good about it. The best bits of the film by a country mile are scenes that feature the three kids on their own, their interaction with each other and their screen Grandfather, played by Billy Connolly. Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin had great success on British TV with a sitcom called Outnumbered about three imaginative and at times, mischievous kids and their parents. What We Did on Our Holiday could easily be the film version of this TV show, albeit with totally different actors which is a shame as we've seen it before and the actors in the TV sitcom are much better performers. Basically, it's a sweet little film with some great ad-libbed performances by the kids that is almost completely ruined by the awful performances by David Tennant, Rosamund Pike and Ben Miller. Tennant has done Shakespeare, as has Pike who gave one of the best performances in recent years in the same year as this film (Gone Girl). Miller is a great comedic actor and Billy Connolly can generally do no wrong but none of these talented adults could raise their performances above pitiful/way below average. The crux of the story is shoehorned between some real dire cinema, which is an absolute crime as the whole point of the story, the big event as it were, is something unique and truly wonderful. The golden part of the scene, which last only about 15 minutes, is something profoundly wonderful but I'm afraid Hamilton and Jenkin squandered it with cheap gags and terrible plot twists. The best jokes in the film aren't written and come straight from the kids and they deserve all credit. They put the adults to shame but then it's hard to tell who to blame, poor performances by talented actors or poor direction by talented writers. It's a huge wasted opportunity, when it could have been a brilliant comedy indie, possibly the best the UK has seen for a couple of decades. Incredibly frustrating stuff, I almost want Hollywood to remake it and you know it's bad when that seems like a good idea. Worth watching for those 15 golden minutes, just try to ignore the rest.