Submarine (2010) – Film Review

Director: Richard Ayoade
Cast: Craig Roberts, Sally Hawkins, Paddy Considine
Certificate: 15

by Joss Spry

Submarine is a sweet, wryly comic and occasionally dark story. It unfolds in a grim but photogenic version of Wales in the eighties.

Here, Oliver (Craig Roberts) is attempting to simultaneously negotiate school, the disintegration of his parent’s marriage, and the trauma of first love.

Oliver’s melodramatic and wildly unreliable narration of his own life is director Richard Ayoade’s chief tool in this self-conscious but effectively charming feature debut.

“Intelligent, funny and melancholy”

Pinching unashamedly but selectively from cinematic greats, Ayoade has his cake and eats it by shifting the blame for this onto his film-obsessed schoolboy lead. He sees his whole existence as a movie and relates it accordingly.

The result is intelligent, funny and melancholy stuff with a lot to recommend it. Not least a great score from Arctic Monkey’s Alex Turner.
8/10