The Nan Movie Review

The Catherine Tate Show was a sketch comedy show that propelled Catherine Tate into stardom in the 2000s. One of the most popular characters from the series was Joanie Taylor, AKA Nan, and she gets a cinematic adventure for British audiences.

Joanie gets a letter from her sister, Nell (Katherine Parkinson) saying she’s dying and wants to see Joanie one last time. Joanie refuses to go because the sisters had a falling out many years prior. Her grandson, Jamie (Matthew Horne), tricks Joanie and takes her on a road trip from London to the West Coast of Ireland, leading to a load of misadventures and Jamie finding out what caused the siblings to fall out.

Films based on TV Shows are nothing new from the British film industry. The 2010s saw a flux of British films based on TV shows like the two Inbetweeners Movies, The Bad Education Movie, Dad’s Army, Spooks: The Greater Good, and many more. The quality of these varies wildly. A film based on Tate’s Nan seemed like an unlikely candidate to get a film because she was based on a series of sketches, not a full TV show. Films based on sketches have even more of a mixed record because for every Wayne’s World and Blue Brothers there are a ton of failures.

The Nan Movie also had a lot of behind-the-scenes issues. It was set to come out in 2020 which obviously didn’t happen because of the pandemic, and it sat on a shelf for nearly two years. People involved must have known they had a turkey because Warner Brothers only released the promotional material a month before it was released in the UK and most damning of all, there was no director credited. Josie Rourke was the onset director, but she only has an executive producer credit. Considering the quality of the film Rourke having her name removed seems like damage control.

Nan was a one-note character. She was an old lady who is rude, offensive, gross, and exploitative. It might work for short sharp sketches on TV but doesn’t offer much of a basis for a feature film. It was clear the filmmakers struggled to make The Nan Movie since it went on big tangents. The most obvious was when Nan and Jamie arrived in Ireland they end up getting roped into a scheme involving a militant vegan. It felt like the film was stretching itself to make sure it was feature-length.

Plot tangents can be forgiven if the film was funny. The Nan Movie stumbles hard on this hurdle. I chuckled once and noticed a lack of laughter from the audience I was with. Joanie was not a pleasant character to be around. She was rude and selfish, and I didn’t want to spend time with her. To show the level of the humour and Joanie’s character she farts in her grandson’s face whilst he was asleep.

The Nan Movie was lowbrow humour but it was poorly executed. At least in the Jackass movies the comradery between the crew felt genuine, or in Bottom the pair were equally awful to each other and everyone around them, so it was fun to see their comeuppance. The Nan Movie had that classic gag of something having an embarrassing acronym. In this case it was Jamie’s art therapy group, Crafting Undo Negative Thinking.

The film was clearly made on a shoestring budget. The greatest evidence of this was the basic animations that were in the film. It looked more like a budget-saving mechanism than a creative or comedy decision. There was a comedic animated police chase where it seemed like the director said ‘I have an idea for an epic action scene’ and the producer replied ‘we can’t afford that.’

It’s odd to think that someone like Rourke was involved in the first place. She was the artistic director at the Donmar Warehouse and her first feature film was Mary Queen of Scots, a prestigious period drama. Most of the time these films that are based on British TV shows recruit a TV director to helm the adaptation or spin-off. It’s meant to keep a sense of continuity.

Tate co-wrote the film with Brett Goldstein, best known as a writer on Ted Lasso. Rourke and Goldstein did seem like they were trying to elevate the material by giving the film an emotional core. This was done through the relationship between Joanie and Nell and the love triangle they had fighting for the affections of an American soldier. It was more like a drama than comedy because of the goings-on between the two and final reconciliation was treated with a lot of weight. This attempt at an emotional story prevents The Nan Movie from reaching the low levels of Mrs. Brown Boys D’Movie and The Keith Lemon Movie.

The film did raise some questions that were a massive distraction. A lot of the film was told through flashbacks and there was no sense of a time period when Joanie and Nell were growing up. People were still using horses and carts, but they end up working as factory girls during the war. It leads to the question, how old is Joanie meant to be, because if she was a teen during the war then she would be in her late 80s at least in the present day.

The film had a subplot involving Niky Wardley’s character. Wardley played a Merseyside police officer who held a vendetta against Joanie because Joanie got the Scouser the sack from the council in London. The police officer followed Joanie and Jamie to Ireland which led me to think ‘you’re going to be sacked for that.’

The Nan Movie was a messy film that even fans of the character might struggle to like, let alone anyone who never liked the character.