Review of What We Did on Our Holiday (2014) by Kenneth B — 24 Apr 2015

What We Did On Our Holiday is a portrayal of a family in supposed turmoil heading off on a trip to to visit a dying grandfather in Scotland on his birthday. It is a comedy, but it's a drama and it's light, yet it is gritty because it is about death and divorce. While it is all of those things and therein lies the problem, the tone of the film is all over the place. There is a whole 20/30 minute section where it is as kiddyish as the Nativity films, Rosamund Pike and David Tennant are nowhere to be seen. Towards the end of the sequence events turn simultaneously serious and ludicrous (I'll resist mentioning plot points). It is ill judged and and astonishingly blasé. In fact if I wasn't a cynic or indeed if this film wasn't so ludicrous I'd perhaps read it as a commentary on how modern day children are disengaged with reality, because really! REALLY?!??

Its not even that the problems of this film can be attributed to one scene, the whole thing is excrutiatingly British. I have already alluded to the misguided tone. One minute it is a light comedy, the next it is Kramer vs Kramer. But the blandly farcical nature of much of the comedy reeks of bad British 1970s sitcoms. I don't say this very often but I hated this film.