Ann Rolls Green Review

Since the growth of streaming services more indie filmmakers have been able to distribute their films to a wider audience. Whilst Netflix gets most of the attention there are lots of short films and feature-length films on Amazon Prime, including the Bristol set comedy Ann Rolls Green.

Ann (Kayleigh-Paige Rees) is a young but confrontational woman living in the West Country. When her cultist cousin Denny (Daniel J. Barnes)  comes to her workplace  he tells her that he has found her missing boyfriend, Frank (Adam Parsons.) The catch for Ann is she has to rejoin the cult if she wants to get her boyfriend back who now believes he’s the second coming of Jesus.

Ann Rolls Green was made by a group of young filmmakers in Bristol, some of them have recently graduated university.  They were clearly working with a limited budget but there’s no faulting their ambition and it is an achievement that they go their film on a major distribution platform. But they are still learning their craft.

As a comedy Ann Rolls Green is more witty rather than outright hilarious. The strength of the film comes from its dialogue exchanges, observations and character interactions. Rees is an emerging actress in the UK. Rees has mostly done short films, music videos, and commercials but she should reach a wider audience when the Jane Austin miniseries Sandition for ITV and PBS is broadcast. Rees has natural comic timing when spouting the dialogue and has an effective death stare. Some of the best moments were when Ann was with her rival, Jane (Tegan Broomfield.)

Whilst Rees has a pretty, girl next door look her character was actually a bit of a bitch. She could easily have been a manic pixel girl yet the filmmakers went in a different direction by making her aggressive and unlikeable. However, the overuse of the word ‘fuck’ becomes grating. It counteracts by Jane seemingly being the shallow, self-centred girl who actually nice when she opens up. The theme of the film is Ann needing to soften up and allow people into her life.

I have a locality bias toward the film because I’m from the West Country. It’s fun for me to see locations like St. Peter’s Church in Castle Park and The Lanes Bowling Alley. The external scenes were where the film shines on a visual level. There were some nice aerial shots which shows that because of drone technology these type of shots are more accessible to lower budget filmmakers. There was also some fancy editing when Ann finally comes face-to-face with her boyfriend. The shots in interiors, especially in houses sadly show the limits of the budget, being flat with its lighting.

The other issue with the film is it’s quote scattershot. The writer/director, George Perry, does come up with some fun concepts for jokes like disguising a kidnapping by making it look like a re-enactment of the crucifixion and the film was bookended via the interactions with a Christian Missionary (Joshua D Bartholomew). But the film at times lacked focus and even though it was aiming to be screwball comedy there were some scenes that were wacky for the sake of being wacky. It should have cut the running time 90 minutes to help streamline the story.

Ann Rolls Green is a film made by young people showing what they are capable of. The actors and production team have a lot of potential who worked with some fun dialogue.

Rees and Perry have also worked on a short film about anorexia called Skinny World since making Ann Rolls Green. I believe Skinny World is their better project so far.

Ann Rolls Green is released on 7th June on Amazon Prime in the UK and US.