Fisherman's Friends

We started our current season last September but in the light of the Coronavirus Pandemic we decided to can what remains of our programme. I write notes for every film we screen and some people even read them. For the sake of completeness I'll post them all over the next few weeks as I currently have no plans to go anywhere.

I'd not seen this film at the cinema, but it was quite fun: certainly a good way to bring an audience back to our film club after the summer break.

Fisherman’s Friends

UK 2019          112 minutes

Director:          Chris Foggin

Starring:            James Purefoy, Daniel Mays, Noel Clarke and Tuppence Middleton

“Fisherman's Friends is a formulaic but thoroughly amiable and upbeat British comedy with a flavour of Ealing Studios and The Full Monty about it. The plot which the screenwriters have cooked up seems almost an afterthought. The singing fishermen came first. The Fisherman’s Friends really were signed by a major record label, had a top 10 hit, and turned into a full-blown media sensation. The film takes considerable liberties with their story, but fans of extra mature Cornish cheddar won’t be complaining.”

Geoffrey McNab

While visiting a Cornish village on a stag weekend Danny (Daniel Mays) a London music executive is tricked buy his boss (Noel Clarke) into trying to sign a group of local fishermen who sign sea shanties. As he struggles to gain the respect and enthusiasm of the group he is drawn deeper into their traditional way of life and this makes him re-evaluate his own integrity and what success actually means.

The film declares that it is “based on a true story”, but the reality is that Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft, the writers and producers of the film, saw the group Fisherman’s Friends performing on TV, optioned their life rights and then created their own story. The real life story of the group is more mundane: radio presenter Johnnie Walker bought two of the group’s homemade CDs while on holiday in Cornwall and then his manager travelled to Port Isaac to meet them and then negotiated a recording contract worth £1 million for them. A very different view of the contemporary Cornish fishing industry can be seen in Mark Jenkin’s Bait (2019), which Peter Bradshaw described as “an episode of EastEnders directed by F W Murnau” and which Mark Kermode has hailed as one of the defining British films of the decade.

Nick Moorcroft has written a number of successful British comedy films including St Trinian’s (2007) and St Trinian’s: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold (2009,) and more recently the romantic comedy Finding Your Feet (2017). Chris Foggin has worked on a films as diverse as My Week with Marilyn (2011), The Iron Lady (2011) and Effie Grey (2014) as an Assistant Director as well as performing a similar role in a number of high profile television programmes, but this is his first feature film as director.

Here's a link to the trailer: