Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (2018) Reviews

• Should old acquaintance be forgot? Yes.

  HuddsOn2018-11-11

  Fractious family gatherings, especially those marking a holiday or life event, are a staple of Anglophone popular culture. What Ben Wheatley seems to have done in this comedy-drama is to take this situation, although with a larger than average cast, and assume the script for a comedy-drama would just write itself. But a New Year's Eve drinks party just isn't a sufficiently high-concept idea to sustain a satisfactory full-length movie without character arcs, dramatic tension, or a plot, which are sadly deficient here. It is filmed in an exaggerated docu-soap style, with shaky camerawork, zip pans and sudden focus changes, which many viewers will no doubt find jarring or pretentious. It wasn't this, however, that I had a problem with, so much as the structure. With such a bewildering number of characters, little attempt to provide any back-story for them before the party, and no real central protagonist, it is difficult to care much about any of the people in this movie, and the dramatic potential of the set-up is largely squandered. For me, the only truly dramatic or intense moment was Colin's rant at his serial-adulterer, family-abandoning brother David, who has arrived with his German girlfriend, about a third of the way in. I did not feel that the dialogue was particularly witty or incisive either - the only line that stuck in my mind was when Colin was setting up the sound system and says "we have to have a disco, because if they don't dance, they fight." The themes of indebtedness and financial embarrassment are touched on and there's even a very perfunctory conversation between two characters about Brexit and party politics, but it doesn't go anywhere with these ideas, and in the subsequent Q&A I found the director's claim that he was making, as he put it, "a film about the 'now'", to be somewhat hollow. The country house is a nice location visually, it has a consistent visual style and a strong cast, but I don't think I can give it more than 5/10.

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• Not a British Festen

  Prismark102019-01-02

  Ben Wheatley is a versatile director who will try his hand in any genre. This is not a guy who wants to be pigeonholed. Happy New Year, Colin Burstead comes across as a modern Play for Today with Mike Leigh type improvisation. It was even co-produced by BBC Films. The film aims to be Festen but is nowhere near as good. I expected a dark tragicomedy and this fell way short. Maybe there was not enough time or money to work out the story. Wheatley regular Neil Maskell is Colin Burstead who for various reasons is hosting a grand New Year's Eve party for his extended family at a country mansion that he has hired. Colin believes in the importance of the family but yet seems impatient when they arrive. His demeanour is that of a man who is certainly not looking for a good time. His dad is in financial trouble because he has lost money on a business venture. Colin gets upset when his philandering younger brother shows up, a man who abandoned his wife and kids. Somewhere in here is a morality tale about broken, brexit Britain. I did not find it.

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• It forgot to be interesting or entertaining

  kieran20192019-01-14

  I had high hopes for this film as I loved 'Kill List' and 'Sightseers' but unfortunately it just came across as an artier version of Eastenders filmed on wobblycam. The premise was interesting but it didn't go anywhere and soon descended into pointless bickering characters which is the mainstay of lowbrow soaps. Sure, that's what happens when families get together, but it would have been good if we were amused or surprised at some point. Perhaps Julia Davis should have written the script for it. As it is, it stands as a failed improv experiment. I hope Ben Wheatley's next effort will be better.

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• A 'nothing' film

  Leofwine_draca2019-01-08

  HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD is another 'nothing' film from director Ben Wheatley, following on from his A FIELD IN ENGLAND. While this isn't quite as bad as that drug-fuelled episode of naval-gazing, it comes close at times. Wheatley assembles a bunch of actors in a country house and has them go off script as they bicker, fight, and the nature of their characters and relationships comes to light. It's a plotless, aimless production, full of the usual crudity and moronic comments from the characters. Neil Maskell plays virtually the same character as his one in KILL LIST so there's no kind of range from him at all. Elder actors like Charles Dance and Bill Paterson should have known better than to agree to appear. Imagine a noisy soap, full of rowdy, unpleasant characters going about their humdrum lives, and you'll be there.

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• glad I got my family Xmas out of the way before seeing this

  gilleliath2018-12-31

  The curious thing about this, from a young and supposedly edgy director, is how conventional it is - exactly the sort of thing that would be shown as a Christmas Play For Today 30-40 years ago, and has been done much better in films like The Family Stone. The characters' actions are often implausible, many of the characters themselves are superfluous (or there only to widen the demographic net) and, although if you persevere to the end it's not entirely negative, it is certainly drab and depressing. A lot of the dialogue sounds improv and, as another reviewer says, they seem to have thought that if they got a decent cast together and workshopped it something good would just magically emerge. And what bloody awful musical taste the family has! We had to keep turning the volume down during the 'disco' scenes. I didn't mind the actual soundtrack music, though, and there are no 'Irish jigs' - it sounds more like the Elizabethan Session or something similar.

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