The Nan Movie movie review

MOVIE TITLE: The Nan Movie

This rough comedy movie is available in theaters and VOD on July 22, 2022

RATING: PG-13

LENGTH: 1 hour 35 minutes

MOVIE REVIEW MOM GRADE: D

IN A NUTSHELL:

Catherine Tate’s iconic character Nan hits the big screen as she goes on a wild road trip from London to Ireland with her grandson Jamie (Mathew Horne) to make amends with her estranged sister Nell (Katherine Parkinson).

THINGS I LIKED:

I’ve been a fan of Catherine Tate for many years, so I was excited to see her in something new. As it turns out, the character she plays is one she featured many years ago on the Catherine Tate Show. She’s talented and funny as she plays a young woman and an aging granny in this.
The cast also includes Mathew Horne, Katherine Parkinson, Parker Sawyers, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Niky Wardley, and Jack Doolan.
There is a subplot about Nan and her younger sister that has some tender moments. Without it, the movie would have been, as the Britts say, complete rubbish.
The aging makeup, technology, and prosthetics are impressive.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

Many viewers won’t like Catherine Tate’s foul-mouthed character because she’s super rude and insensitive to others. Of course, that’s why fans of her British TV show loved this character but, surprisingly, many of them have been hating on this film because the character is all over the place. With good direction, this movie might have found a better script about 15 years ago when the Nan character was popular in England.
A lot of non-British viewers (like me) won’t be able to understand what the heck Nan says the majority of the time because of her thick accent. This would be a movie that would benefit from turning on the captions. Then again, you’re not really missing great dialogue.
There are random scenes that are animated. As it turns out, the investors in this movie wanted fewer World War 2 scenes and more modern sequences, so they created new footage without the director Josie Rourke to cut costs. As a result, her name was deleted from the credits and the final movie has no director. Sadly, it shows.
Most of the cringeworthy, toilet humor doesn’t land.
The road trip rambles through ridiculous situations.