Metacritic reviews

Here’s a movie that tells us that the days of summer, like the boys of summer in Don Henley’s song, are going to get outlived by the love they inspire. It’s what happens in this thoroughly sweet-natured, charming and unassuming British film.

Interlocking vignettes swing from laugh-out-loud comedy to piercing melancholia, but at the centre of it all there is a genuine sense of rebirth and renewal – no mean feat for a small movie with a big heart and a surprisingly wide-ranging vision.

Not much happens in the understated British comedy Days of the Bagnold Summer, and that’s rather the point. It’s a truthful and sometimes moving slice of life (and cake) elevated by vivid lead performances.

The approach is scrupulously even-handed. The film is just as interested in mild-mannered Sue’s journey as it is in Daniel’s coming of age. The screenplay, adapted by Lisa Owens (Bird’s wife) from an award winning graphic novel by Joff Winterhart, is wryly low key, with a keen eye for the subtle stabs and small daily humiliations that gradually mount.

Clever and bright, Days of the Bagnold Summer gains much from Daniel, Sue, and their realistic relationship — from their arguments to moments of bonding and everything in between — creating an endearing if weightless film.

Sometimes it just takes one actor to elevate a film from innocuous, take-it-or-leave it fare into something winningly tender – and if your first film’s needing that kind of lift-off, you could hardly do much better than Monica Dolan.

If the film never completely coheres into a satisfying whole, Days Of The Bagnold Summer has a lot going for it: a nicely judged sense of character, an eye for detail and strong performances, especially from Dolan. It also suggests Simon Bird is a filmmaker worth watching.

The sour-tinged comedy of excruciatingly English embarrassment deploys some talented performers on both sides of the camera but its promising parts never quite cohere into a properly satisfying whole.

Even if the general ultra-clean cartoonishness of it all is deliberate, the film’s whisper-thin premise and sitcom-like characters are the cinema equivalent of Sweethearts candy: rather too sugared, and immediately forgotten.

Amiably anecdotal, the movie gets wry results from Dolan and other players, including Rob Brydon as a would-be ladies man and Tamsin Greig as a “hipper” mom than Sue.