Title: Walking on Sunshine
Directors: Max Giwa, Dania Pasquini
Starring: Hannah Arterton, Annabel Scholey, Giulio Berruti, Leona Lewis
Released: October 2014
Length: 97 minutes
Three years ago Taylor (Hannah Arterton) met Raf (Giulio Berruti) whilst on holiday in Italy. They fell madly in love but it could not last as Taylor returned to the UK to go to university. Fast forward to the present day and somehow Taylor’s sister Maddie (Annabel Scholey) is now living in Italy and is engaged to Raf. To make things worse, Taylor doesn’t know… until she turns up on holiday again hoping to find her lost love. Naturally it doesn’t take long for her to find him!
Taylor desperately tries to cover up the fact that she and Raf had a relationship as she doesn’t want to hurt her sister. How does Maddie not know about all of this? Never mind. It’s a minor plot point in the end as Taylor does reveal the truth.
So will Maddie and Raf still go through with the wedding or will Maddie’s ex-boyfriend steal her away and leave the door open for Taylor and Raf to rekindle their love? And do you care? Well, yeah maybe a bit.
This film seems to have taken a bit of a trashing on review sites and from the public as well, even if it did take over £3m at the box office in the UK
which isn’t bad at all.
It’s basically very similar to Mama Mia but it’s actually better. The songs are more varied, the singing on display is a lot better and the storyline despite being pretty thin is actually less stupid.
In the supporting roles as friends of Maddie, Raf and Taylor are Leona Lewis is Elena, Katy Brand as Lil, Danny Kirrane as Mikey and Giulio Corso as Enrico. None of them have a lot to do, but they are all perfectly acceptable in their roles. Greg Wise as Doug is given a bigger role as Maddie’s ex-boyfriend.
The direction solid for this sort of film and the pace is fast enough to keep viewers interested and not think too much about how silly it all is.
I’m certainly not a lover of 80s pop music. I was not the guy to go to 80s nights when I was at university. So you might think I’d hate the songs in this film. They are after all a number of well known 80s pop songs including "Holiday" (Madonna),“Venus" (Bananarama), "The Power of Love" (Huey Lewis and the News), ”Don't You Want Me" (The Human League), ”Walking on Sunshine" (Katrina and the Waves), ”Eternal Flame" (The Bangles), “It Must Have Been Love" (Roxette), ”Faith” (George Michael), ”White Wedding" (Billy Idol) and ”If I Could Turn Back Time" (Cher). All the songs are fun numbers that pretty much everyone will know and enjoy. Did I enjoy them? I didn’t hate them and that is praise enough from me.
Walking on Sunshine is a light, breezy, fun film allowing Arterton to showcase her talents in a fairly safe environment whilst having fun. It’s by no means a film that will change your world but it’s a lot better than it’s been given credit for and it’ll hold your attention for the running time. I can see this being a big hit at ‘girls’ nights in’ across the country and there are a lot worse films that men could get dragged along to as well.
