The unbelievable story of Fisherman’s Friends arrives on VOD this weekend to a world in dire need of a feel-good true tale. This is one of those stories that if it weren’t true, you’d never believe it.
Daniel Mays is Danny, a music manager whose job has been (and he’s really good at it) finding talent, getting them a record deal, and then fostering their success into the upper echelons of music business fame. When he and three of his best mates head to Cornwall for a bachelor’s weekend, the Londoners could not stick out more like a neon sign if they tried. After a pub night left all four hungover, their next day took a fateful turn. Ten local fishermen, appropriately known as Fisherman’s Friends, sang a few sea chanties as their fellow villagers looked on with supreme pride. As a lark, Danny’s boss Troy (Noel Clarke) sent him out to inquire what it would take to get the fishermen to sign with them as they promised to work hard for a record deal.
Danny never knew it was a joke until long after he ingrained himself in the Cornwall community. Even still, the man who has an ear for talent, genuinely believes that there is something there with this ten singers that will play well with audiences who are yearning for something authentic and real amongst a music business landscape that is littered with pre-packaged pop. He better do his best, because he has given his word to the group’s salty leader, Jim (James Purefoy, The Following), who also is the father of Alwyn (Tuppence Middleton), who runs the Bed and Breakfast where Danny is staying after his mates left him behind as they scurried back to London.
There is a bit of a spark between Danny and Alwyn, and he gets along famously with her little girl, Tamsyn (Meadow Nobrega). On several fronts—achieved without it being spelled out through wasted exposition—dating, or even romancing a single mother is risky and wrought with fragility. This is all handled with just the right emotive touch by director Chris Foggin, working from a stellar screenplay by Piers Ashworth, Meg Leonard, and Nick Moorcroft. They have come together and hit all the right notes with a story that could have been dripping with saccharine that would not befit the people of Cornwall. Instead, viewers are treated to a grounded in reality musical tale. It pulls at your heartstrings as much as it will have you cheering with delight.
Not to knock Hollywood, but more often than not a feel-good true story like Fisherman’s Friends would miss the mark at the most and at the least, put the emphasis on the wrong emotions at the wrong time. There is something about British cinema, heck international filmmaking for that matter, that never sacrifices emotional reality for heart-warming points as Hollywood producers are known to do. That could never be truer than it is with Foggin’s flick. In fact, there are any number of narrative land mines with this story that were impeccably navigated by filmmakers.
The reasons why Danny believed that a group of singers with more grey in their beards and hair than the collective that comprises the top 100 album charts during any given week ring true. This is a music culled from centuries upon centuries of being passed down from generation to generation. It couldn’t be more traditional if it tried! He, as a musical expert, is charged with having a finger on the pulse of audiences. It seems like a longshot, an enormous risk. But if you look closer, as Fisherman’s Friends stunningly lays out, perhaps these 10 sea weary men speak to something larger that has been lost by our society as a whole.
The latest and greatest is traditionally what music execs are searching for, but Danny saw something different. He saw an audience yearning for the musical stylings of ole. As he points out in the film, X-Factor and shows like that illustrate that the 18 to 25-year-old singer is not necessarily the soul or souls who most reflect who we are as an audience. More mature singers, like Susan Boyle, can capture the fancy of audiences because of their life experience that they innately bring to their artistry.
There’s a scene in Foggin’s film where the guys are in London (with hopes of getting that record contract) and they ditch Danny to experience the big city on their own. A younger chap asks them what they sing and upon hearing “sea shanties,” he appears confused. Then, the lads start singing and before you know it, the entire pub is belting out every word, utterly engrossed in the lyrics and musical lineage that is ingrained in the DNA of every single soul.
Foggin has the precise touch that this tale requires. It would have been easy (and tempting) for the helmer to try to manage the pace and emotional ebbs and flows more directly. Instead, he simply directed his ensemble to bring to life a script that impeccably captured all of the essences that add up to a movie experience that expertly taps that heart and head connection sweet spot. In all seriousness, even though it sounds cliché, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, Fisherman’s Friends will explore every single emotion in the emotive toolbox.
Also, the helmer never takes his audiences’ cinematic intelligence for granted. This is not a film that holds your hand. It covers a lot of fertile ground and leaves you with much to think about—from history and traditions versus “progress,” to emotions and their unwanted place in business dealings. Filmmakers and this stellar ensemble have painted a beautiful picture about a way of life that dates back a millennia, all captured through a musical legacy that is as entertaining as it is enlightening.
It is a true ensemble, and it would be difficult to single out any one performer. But there is something about what Purefoy brings to his role that is truly special. He is a father, a grandfather, but also a son to a mother and father that are very much a part of this narrative’s cornucopia. The actor is one of those who when you see his face, you immediately recall his past work.
He is so transcendent in Fisherman’s Friends, that it will likely be this role that now defines everything else he ever tackles.
Grade: A-