All you need to know about the lovely Richard Ayoade’s debut feature is that if it had been American, the lead character would have been played by Michael Cera.
This coming of age film is mildly wacky, mildly funny, mildly moving, but extremely derivative. The only thing that differentiates it from 100 American indie films is that it is set in Wales.
Firstly, there’s Oliver (Craig Roberts) the main character – an intelligent but awkward teen trying to lose his virginity with a pretty, detached girl (Yasmin Paige). From this aspect the film reminds me most of 2009’s Youth in Revolt. As in that mess of a film, here the main character is extremely unlikeable.
Oliver spends most of his time staring wide-eyed at people, or in his room listening to French records and reading philosophy. This character is a fairly standard template in cinema, because lots of filmmakers liked listening to French records and reading philosophy in their teens, or at least like to think they did.
Oliver has an uncanny similarity to Bud Cort in the cult Harold and Maude, a film which taught Wes Anderson (and apparently in turn Ayoade) everything he knows. In Harold and Maude, the soundtrack was a collection of gently lilting songs made by Cat Stevens. In Submarine, Alex Turner from the hideous Arctic Monkeys picks up an acoustic guitar and has a go at being sensitive instead.
Of course, Oliver has troubles at home. His almost catatonic father (a mesmerising Noah Taylor) suffers from depression, and his mother (a much too young Sally Hawkins) has dowdy clothes and a bad haircut. Added to this, her old flame (Paddy Considine) has moved in next door. He’s a trendy twonk with a terrible mullet and a mid-Atlantic accent who works as a motivational speaker, offering people a chance to change their life through the power of light (so basically Patrick Swayze in Donnie Darko, then).
Just as coming of age films from the 70s were set in the 50s, so Submarine is set in the 80s. Not the real 80s, mind you, but the faux-80s of Napoleon Dynamite (basically today but without mobile phones). There aren’t any fun pop hits to set the scene, just a few odd outfits which wouldn’t seem out of place in any indie film set today. Annoyingly, one of the characters uses the phrase “it’s all good”, which would never have been said in Wales then.
Oliver walks around his depressing seaside town for most of the film – sometimes with the girl, sometimes thinking about the girl or his problem parents, but mostly thinking about himself. And maybe that’s the real problem. Oliver is selfish and doesn’t react how you would want him to react to the genuine dramas around him. If this was slightly wackier and played fully for laughs, maybe it would be ok, but it isn’t.
Submarine brings nothing new to the genre. It doesn’t innovate, and it certainly doesn’t impress. It’s nice that Ayoade was trying to make an interesting British film, but unfortunately he failed by simply copying the Americans.
Watch Harold and Maude instead.
