Robyn Candyce
The story is straight forward boy and girl have summer romance, they fall in love, girl has to leave for school, they go their separate ways.
Three years later the girl, Taylor (Hannah Arterton, “Atlantis”) has a reason to return to the place of her steamy summer romance, in this case it’s sister Maddie’s (Annabel Scholey, “Inspector George Gently”) sudden wedding.
She runs into her old friends Lil (Katy Brand, “Mongrels”), Elena (Leona Lewis, “X Factor”), and some others only to find out her sister’s fiancé is her old flame Raf (Giulio Berruti, “L’amore e Imperfetto”) is her old summer romance, but does he still love her, and should she tell her sister?
Although the language, rhythm and subtext are clearly aimed at an audience of a more mature nature, the written language and execution of the character’s actions seems aimed at an audience of a preteen range.
The musical era (1980’s) from which the score was derived gave birth to so many great songs that it’s easy to see how an audience from that era could easily become disappointed with the selection of music that the score is comprised of. Also the placement of parts of the score, like moments in the story line in general, seemed abrupt, and the choice of song didn’t quite fit the moment, and I wonder if there really was a better song to fit the scene that the writer, Joshua St. Johnson (Material Girl) could have chosen to convey the heart of that moment. Also the moments where there would be random chorus voices, just voices no people, joining in the song was distracting. Additionally the only three characters that were remotely developed, sort of, were Taylor, Lil and – with the rest you were only given the information about them that you needed to understand the film which was unfortunate as revealing more depth within the supporting characters could have only added to the film’s overall watchability.
With all that said the arrangements themselves were well done, they were simple which was a nice choice, and also the most appropriate one for the film. The fact that there were realistic components to the dance numbers – as though it’s possible that people just randomly broke into song in the middle of the street or by a pool to express their feelings – which was really quite nice to watch.
The costume, makeup and production design team did an A+ job, and the performances were truly amazing, both in terms of acting and vocally, simply stunning, rare and above caliber for a musical of this genre.
In general, despite my overall critique, “Walking On Sunshine” was actually a pretty enjoyable film, and definitely would be fun at a teen sleepover, or just a lazy night.
VOD
