Submarine

Director Richard Ayoade
With Craig Roberts, Yasmin Paige and Sally Hawkins
Released 18 March

It's standard practice for British comedians to make the jump from small screen to big—some successfully (Simon Pegg, Emma Thompson), others less so (Steve Coogan, Lenny Henry). But it's far less common for a comic to try directing movies rather than starring in them. Richard Ayoade is the exception that proves the rule. Best known as the ultra-geeky Moss in Channel 4's The IT Crowd, Ayoade hasn't even given himself a role in his debut film as writer-director, nor has he kept to contemporary London—the obvious location for a comedian's first film. Staying firmly behind the camera, he's adapted Joe Dunthorne's novel, Submarine, into a bittersweet coming-of-age comedy set in a Welsh valley town in the 1980s.

It's here that a duffel-coated 15-year-old named Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is scheming to seduce the school pyromaniac, Jordana (Yasmin Paige). His romantic role models aren't too inspiring. When Oliver mentions that he has a girlfriend, his hangdog father (Noah Taylor) makes him a compilation tape: one side of songs to help him relish the relationship, and one side to console him when he's dumped. Meanwhile, his uptight mother (Sally Hawkins, utterly different from the character that made her name in Happy Go Lucky), is showing an unhealthy interest in her ex-boyfriend (Paddy Considine), who has come to town to peddle his David Icke-ish mysticism and to show off his Peter Stringfellow haircut.

Submarine is the latest in a long line of books and films that reveal the male of the species at his most nerdy and self-deluded. A provincial adolescent whose hormonal awkwardness is exacerbated by his parents' crumbling marriage, Oliver is a close relation to Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole, but there are several other obvious ancestors. The heroes of Billy Liar and Rushmore share Oliver's DNA, while High Fidelity and Annie Hall feature his older but not much wiser incarnations. Submarine, which doesn't feature a single ocean-going vehicle, is a worthy addition to the list. It filters events through Oliver's overactive imagination, so his hopeless seduction techniques are always counterpointed by his pompous voice-over and egotistical daydreams: the film opens with him picturing the candlelit vigils that, he feels, would be bound to follow his death.

The energy flags in the second half, partly because the whimsy gets tiring, and also because the story seems to be an afterthought compared to the beautifully drawn characters and the offbeat style. But Submarine is always funny, constantly heartfelt, and it bursts with quirky invention. In future, Ayoade is likely to be labelled as a director who sometimes acts in comedies, rather than the other way round.

Nicholas Barber