Not Another Happy Ending

Filled with stylish shops, quirky offices and green parkland, this Scottish romcom is a great advert for Glasgow, but it delivers an awful warning to filmmakers about shooting a script that’s seriously unready for public consumption. First-time author Jane (Karen Gillan) falls out with publisher Tom (Stanley Weber) when he changes the title of her family memoir. But after the book becomes a sensation, he’s hoping a hit second novel will save his company. Trouble is, newfound happiness works against her muse, so he tries everything to make her unhappy and productive – only to risk (and you knew this was coming) curdling their undeclared affections for each other. Although contrived to the point of idiocy, this set-up might, possibly, have had a chance given a charismatic cast. Yet Gillan’s forced kookiness proves grating from the off, and wooden romantic foil Weber appears to be the flatpack version of France’s Romain Duris. Add a truly soppy father-daughter bonding subplot and the knuckle-chewing only intensifies. ‘Sometimes love needs a rewrite’ is the tagline. They got that right.