52 Films by Women Vol 3. 32. PATRICK (Director: Mandie Fletcher)
Congratulations go to Mandie
Fletcher, who is the first British woman director to have two films in this
blog series – see ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ (from ’52 Films by Women Volume One’).
Fresh from the box office success of the 2016 TV spin off, Ms Fletcher has
helmed a dog movie, Patrick, starring Beattie Edmondson in her first big screen
leading role, as hapless school teacher, Sarah Francis, who inherits from her grandmother
a pug called Patrick, who is like a canine version of Winston Churchill, minus
the speeches, war record and an Academy Award.
According to the Kennel Club’s
2010 survey of most popular dog breeds in Britain, the pug scores at number
nine. The website ‘Pets4Homes’ describes the pug as ‘the comedian of the canine
world ... intelligent, entertaining and good natured’ (whatever that means). I
don’t believe dogs should be entertaining, at least not without theatrical
representation and the promise of a summer season in Blackpool. ‘Pets4Homes’
remarks on the pug’s distinctive looks: ‘short squat bodies, curled tails and
squashed faces’. Well. You’ll be interested to know that the most popular breed
of dog in Britain is the Labrador retriever. I thought it would be the Brexit
Bulldog, but the survey is a number of years old. The Brexit Bulldog is a term
coined by the BBC radio series, ‘Dead Ringers’ and refers to the politician and
failed SAS man, David Davis. The great thing about failing in the SAS (the UK’s
Special Air Service) is that because they are so secret, no one is supposed to
know about them. Except that we do.
A more recent survey (2017) puts
the pug at number four – the Labrador retriever is still number one. The happy
puppy site cautions against buying a pug simply for its brachycephalic (flat
faced) looks. The pug is a special needs dog: low energy - they don’t run
around all day - and in severe danger of overheating, rather like anyone in a
top storey flat in North London who can’t open the window because the
downstairs neighbour won’t stop smoking and nearby Finsbury Park is hosting a
music festival. (Rant over!) You should avoid taking a pug for a walk in warm
weather and never leave your pug alone in a car on a hot day with only the
satellite navigation for company. (‘You are going nowhere. You haven’t moved at
all.’) Quite apart from the heat, it could give the pug a complex.
The pug’s essential charm is that
it is portable: it’s the dog for people who really want a cat but cannot be
bothered. When I was growing up, we had a West Highland Terrier; my best friend
owned a Springer Spaniel. I had no problem with the Springer Spaniel, but our
‘Westie’ bit me.
Unlike its breed, Patrick
is a bit of a hybrid: part rom-com, part inspirational teacher movie, part
animal comedy and part sports flick – it ends with a crowd-rousing fun-run,
which is a contradiction in terms; I mean, fun-runs never attract much of a
crowd, unlike full marathons, because you really want to see your old man sweating
a ton and looking like a complete prat whilst wearing a traffic cone. What do
you mean, that’s not his costume? The film’s villains are men of a certain age,
who either don’t like pets in buildings or despise young teachers who think
they can win over school kids by dumbing down the classics: at one point, Sarah
explains the plot of ‘Jane Eyre’ in a way Year Eleven teenagers can understand,
though strangely not with acronyms (‘Jane was well into Mr R – YOLO’) or with
emoticons, which are quite difficult to do without an interactive white board,
which in itself sounds vaguely racist.
Like someone who has raided a lot
of wardrobes in her time, Fletcher and her co-writers, Vanessa Davies and Paul
de Vos – admission, I knew Ms Davies in her publicity days – steal from a bunch
of movies and television shows. When Sarah first turns up at her parents’ house
for her father’s birthday, she is wearing her dress back-to-front. When Robin
Williams first appeared in the TV series, ‘Mork and Mindy’, he wore a suit
back-to-front and was mistaken for a vicar. Some of us remember. The film opens
with Sarah being dumped by her partner, who is wearing a bicycle helmet and,
ipso facto, is not worthy of our sympathy. It is not that bicycle helmets are
offensive: you should put them on outside the house. At any rate, he has met
someone else, and you feel happy for him, because Sarah drives, the man has a
bicycle: it is not going to work.
However, Sarah has to put up with
her gloating sister, who has two adorable children who still like watching ‘Toy
Story’ as opposed to being on their mobile phones. The film, incidentally, is
released in the UK by Disney, who also releases Pixar Animated films like ‘Toy
Story’ and its sequels.
Sarah typically turns up late for
the reading of a will – I say typically, because she is portrayed as
scatter-brained rather than goes to lots of readings of wills, which would be a
very creepy hobby – and discovers she has been left the dog. Of course, her
sister with her two teenage kids would be a perfect dog owner – plenty of
people in the house to care for it, plus money for kennels – but Gran thought
that Patrick the pug would be good for Sarah, like vegetables or ‘Love in the
Time of Cholera’ .
Sarah takes Patrick to the pet
store and the pug chooses its own treats, which Sarah immediately puts back on
the shelf. I don’t know why domesticated dogs don’t have their own dedicated TV
channel –Petflix – so they could choose their own entertainment. I imagine dogs
would like to watch ‘Forrest Gump’, because it makes a change to see a man run
real fast.
After Patrick predictably tears
apart Sarah’s soft furnishings, the young teacher whose technique is to use a
klaxon to get her class’s attention, has to find a dog sitter. Her neighbour
(Gemma Jones) also has a dog, and catches Sarah urinating outside (don’t ask).
However, after one morning with Patrick, the neighbour says ‘never again’.
In screenwriters’ classes – and
‘all you can eat’ buffets – they talk about obstacles. What does Sarah have to
overcome? Her hatred of dogs? Her inability to manage a relationship? Her
disdain for fun runs? All of the above, but not her scattered brain! Taking
Patrick out for a walk, Sarah discovers that she can meet men without ever
having to make small talk – especially when one man is caught up in her dog
lead. She encounters a handsome jogger (Ed Skrein) who looks like he should be
in a rowing team. She also meets another dog owner (Tom Bennett), who is older,
scruffy and strangely more her type.
Now I’ve seen ‘Bridget Jones’
Diary’ – the question I want answered is: when are these two men going to
fight? The answer is never. The vet’s biggest problem is that he is late for
his date with Sarah and he goes fifty-fifty on the meal. Very romantic! He is
too into his boxed-sets (‘Game of Thrones’) to turn up on time. Sarah’s biggest
chance for happiness is with the scruff, who, as it turns out has problems of
his own.
There is quite a bit of dog
inspired slapstick, which mainly involves Sarah falling over, including onto a
park bench which I imagine is quite painful. She also brings a stray dog back
to its owner (Bernard Cribbins) which puts her in our good books.
Sarah only teaches one text,
which doesn’t make her much of an English teacher. I mean, she doesn’t tackle
Shakespeare, Chaucer or even Gerard Manley Hopkins. You’d think she’d quote
from the classics, but ‘Notting Hill’, an excerpt from which features here,
doesn’t count.
At one point in the film, there
is a houseboat, as if all scatter-brained single women want is to live on the
river. They want to get on the housing ladder not into the city’s sewer. My
biggest complaint about Patrick is that the script could
have been written any time in the last twenty five years. Admission: a script I
once worked on also had a houseboat and ended with a race. It also featured the
madam of a betting slip brothel, which goes to show how tastes have changed.
Sarah takes part in the fun run
to raise money for a mobility scooter – for a stranger, not for the pug. Will
she complete five kilometres? This doesn’t count as edge of your seat stuff.
There is also a troubled student
who has a hard time with her parents’ divorce. Most kids I know have a hard
time with their parents’ marriage – what, you left me on my own again?
Edmondson’s real life mother is
the comedian Jennifer Saunders, who appears here as a home economics teacher. I
have also wondered about the topic ‘home economics’, which basically equates to
home cooking. I mean, isn’t it cheaper to buy cakes from the supermarket? Saunders
is on hand to offer comedy cakes as opposed to ones laced with narcotics,
because in a Disney movie the latter would never do. Meera Syal, another
television comedian, has a bit of business involving a loudhailer which she is
reluctant to relinquish.
Patrick will struggle to
recoup its £6 million production budget but passes the time amiably. Edmondson
is likeable with the ability to throw shapes with her mouth – the upturned
‘what the raspberry’. The film cautions potential dog owners to learn about
breeds they are interested in but only right at the end credits when they’ve
all left the auditorium or are looking at their mobile phones. I have a serious
issue with the title, which doesn’t bark ‘dog movie’. There aren’t many famous
Patricks: Stewart, Swayze and a saint aside. You want to see the pug clear the
slugs out of the back garden – Saint Patrick rid Ireland of snakes, don’t you
know – but this must have ended up on the cutting room floor. Incidentally, I
wonder what happens to digital waste. Is unused digital footage archived?
Reviewed at Cineworld West India Quay (East London) Screen One,
Wednesday 4 July 2018, 18:10 screening – one walk out (not me)
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