Edinburgh International Film Festival Mary And Max White Lightnin And A Boy Called Dad Reviews

It was this mentality that got me in for a 9am screening of Mary And Max, the feature-length debut of Adam Elliott, the man behind Oscar-winning short Harvie Krumpet (you can find it here on YouTube if you wish to watch it). Elliott’s film is lovingly animated, and the claymation detail is something that will probably be underappreciated on the first viewing, probably because Elliott consistently makes it look so easy. Structurally Mary And Max is a deceptively simple film – girl writes letter, man writes back, repeat –  but with the parameters set, visual flourishes abound: switches between full Technicolour and dreary grey, traditional 2D animation, for example. The story is stronger when it’s focused on the  anecdotal, purely because it gets you familiar with the characters whilst knocking your socks off, and when the communication between the characters breaks down in the third act, the film begins to overrun its welcome. But as a visually exciting and hilariously cruel (yet sweet) animation, Elliott’s film pretty much hits the spot. Now, I had no idea what to expect from White Lightnin’, the debut of ad director Dominic Murphy and written by Vice magazine founders Shane Smith and Eddy Moretti. The EIFF catalogue calls it a “fantasy biopic” inspired by the life of Appalachian mountain dancer Jesco White – stick with me here – with the forests of Croatia doubling for backwoods Virginia. Jesco (Brothers Of The Head‘s Edward Hogg) gets himself into all sorts of scrapes as a child, and by “scrapes” I mean ‘addiction to sniffing gasoline and lighter fluid and knifing young offenders’. To save his soul, he follows in his father’s footsteps as a mountain dancer and shacks up with an married older woman by the name of Cilla (Carrie Fisher, seriously), but the devil is always around the corner… My buzz, carried over from the White Lightnin’ screening, was squandered by Brian Percival’s A Boy Called Dad, a social-realist film with ripped-from-the-headlines relevance: 14-year-old Robbie (Kyle Ward) becomes a father even while his own relationship with his father is fractured at best. Unsure of where to start, Percival’s film shows us the birth of the child, then Robbie’s chance meeting with his father (Ian Hart), then some quality father-son bonding via the power of montage. What the film lacks in originality or, well, subtlety, it makes up for in heart, with Hart and Ward’s performances compensating for the script’s failings. For a while at least. And then a gun comes out, shattering any concept of realism, and Robbie runs off with the baby. A Boy Called Dad asks us to trust too much in it – trust in it to trudge up the same clichés of, hell, the British New Wave (dilapidated cities, children older than they deserve to be, ‘women are doing everything wrong’ frames of mind), trust in it to insult our intelligence (Robbie, who comes from a stable background, must be the only teenager in Britain without a mobile phone on him), trust in it to flesh out a series of generational failings between a series of fathers that, quite frankly, isn’t up to pat. By the ridiculous climax (with armed police present and a cliff-edge jump!), it’s enough to make you lose some faith in the British take on cinematic realism. It’s not awful – newcomers Ward and Charlene McKenna show promise, and Percival knows how to frame a pretty shot – but this  ‘realistic’ film has suddenly made me very cautious for tomorrow’s screening of Fish Tank. Remember, you can follow me on twitter.com/sitartattoo – click and get to chatting! I love to chat.

title: “Edinburgh International Film Festival Mary And Max White Lightnin And A Boy Called Dad Reviews” ShowToc: true date: “2025-07-20” author: “Cathy Gurke”

It was this mentality that got me in for a 9am screening of Mary And Max, the feature-length debut of Adam Elliott, the man behind Oscar-winning short Harvie Krumpet (you can find it here on YouTube if you wish to watch it). Elliott’s film is lovingly animated, and the claymation detail is something that will probably be underappreciated on the first viewing, probably because Elliott consistently makes it look so easy. Structurally Mary And Max is a deceptively simple film – girl writes letter, man writes back, repeat –  but with the parameters set, visual flourishes abound: switches between full Technicolour and dreary grey, traditional 2D animation, for example. The story is stronger when it’s focused on the  anecdotal, purely because it gets you familiar with the characters whilst knocking your socks off, and when the communication between the characters breaks down in the third act, the film begins to overrun its welcome. But as a visually exciting and hilariously cruel (yet sweet) animation, Elliott’s film pretty much hits the spot. Now, I had no idea what to expect from White Lightnin’, the debut of ad director Dominic Murphy and written by Vice magazine founders Shane Smith and Eddy Moretti. The EIFF catalogue calls it a “fantasy biopic” inspired by the life of Appalachian mountain dancer Jesco White – stick with me here – with the forests of Croatia doubling for backwoods Virginia. Jesco (Brothers Of The Head‘s Edward Hogg) gets himself into all sorts of scrapes as a child, and by “scrapes” I mean ‘addiction to sniffing gasoline and lighter fluid and knifing young offenders’. To save his soul, he follows in his father’s footsteps as a mountain dancer and shacks up with an married older woman by the name of Cilla (Carrie Fisher, seriously), but the devil is always around the corner… My buzz, carried over from the White Lightnin’ screening, was squandered by Brian Percival’s A Boy Called Dad, a social-realist film with ripped-from-the-headlines relevance: 14-year-old Robbie (Kyle Ward) becomes a father even while his own relationship with his father is fractured at best. Unsure of where to start, Percival’s film shows us the birth of the child, then Robbie’s chance meeting with his father (Ian Hart), then some quality father-son bonding via the power of montage. What the film lacks in originality or, well, subtlety, it makes up for in heart, with Hart and Ward’s performances compensating for the script’s failings. For a while at least. And then a gun comes out, shattering any concept of realism, and Robbie runs off with the baby. A Boy Called Dad asks us to trust too much in it – trust in it to trudge up the same clichés of, hell, the British New Wave (dilapidated cities, children older than they deserve to be, ‘women are doing everything wrong’ frames of mind), trust in it to insult our intelligence (Robbie, who comes from a stable background, must be the only teenager in Britain without a mobile phone on him), trust in it to flesh out a series of generational failings between a series of fathers that, quite frankly, isn’t up to pat. By the ridiculous climax (with armed police present and a cliff-edge jump!), it’s enough to make you lose some faith in the British take on cinematic realism. It’s not awful – newcomers Ward and Charlene McKenna show promise, and Percival knows how to frame a pretty shot – but this  ‘realistic’ film has suddenly made me very cautious for tomorrow’s screening of Fish Tank. Remember, you can follow me on twitter.com/sitartattoo – click and get to chatting! I love to chat.