Local Hero (1983)
Directed by Bill Forsyth
An American oil company sends a man to Scotland to buy up an entire village where they want to build a refinery. But things don't go as expected.
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What critics compared Local Hero to
The heightened oddness may, in theme and setting, recall the widely loved Bill Forsyth comedy “Local Hero” (1983), which made crucial and rewarding use of a phone booth as well.
The repeated use of a lone phone box operating as the sole link home for a cultural fish out of water is a lovely nod to Local Hero .
What in lesser hands could have either become something unrelenting bleak or heavy-handedly didactic, Sharrock has instead fashioned the type of dryly funny, intimately personal character study that recalls the great works of filmmakers like Bill Forsyth ( Local Hero , Housekeeping ) or Hal Ashby ( Being There , Harold and Maude ).
If all of that makes Limbo sound tremendously heavy, the opposite is true: this is perhaps more than anything a comedy, a picture whose dry wit recalls that of another Scottish filmmaker, Bill Forsyth, who, in the 1980s, gave us wonderfully wry comedies like Gregory’s Girl and Local Hero.
He wears his filmmaking influences on his sleeve, with the island setting, isolated phone booth and droll comedy of understatement inevitably calling to mind Bill Forsyth’s 1983 classic “Local Hero.” (He seems to welcome the comparison, even setting a similar scene against the northern lights.)
Lying somewhere between Local Hero and Elia Suleiman, Limbo is an endearing, intelligent and subtly uplifting piece of filmmaking.
If only someone would have commented,“You can’t eat scenery!” as the townspeople, in a similar situation, did in Bill Forsyth’s charming and deeper Local Hero , also about a poor, scenic town, about to be destroyed, physically, by industry that will bring economic growth.
Naturally, this Frankenstein’s monster started with a dead body: 2003’s Seducing Doctor Lewis , a French-Canadian comedy in the Local Hero mold about an idyllic fishing village that pulls out all the stops to lure a doctor to town, and thus make itself eligible as a site for a new factory.
Its sentimental plot – a fishing community hatch a plan to entice an oil company to set up shop in their village that hinges on the residents convincing a city slicker plastic surgeon to take on the position of town doctor – is essentially a crude cut-and-shut of Local Hero and Doc Hollywood .
Forsyth, director of wry and subtle films like "Gregory's Girl" and "Local Hero," hasn't made a film since 1999.
All manner of shenanigans follow, and there’s more than a little of the Irish indie farce, Waking Ned Devine , in the movie’s DNA, although William Forsyth’s Local Hero and Michael J. Fox’s Doc Hollywood also factor into the equation.
The heightened oddness may, in theme and setting, recall the widely loved Bill Forsyth comedy “Local Hero” (1983), which made crucial and rewarding use of a phone booth as well.
Crowe said in interviews that his model for this movie was the Scottish director Bill Forsyth’s minor-key 1983 charmer Local Hero; he pays homage by casting Peter Riegert as Benjamin’s editor.
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It's sometimes obvious, and the film owes more than a bit to Bill Forsyth's similarly themed "Local Hero," but most of it is like nothing you've ever seen before.
Its offhanded tone is reminiscent of the films of director Bill Forsythe, such as "Local Hero" and "Gregory's Girl"; like those films, the comedy in "The Dish" plays beautifully because the characters are so likable and the jokes rarely feel forced.
Waked's character is more like a mystic-but-not-overtly religious ("faith" is mentioned; "Allah" is not) riff on, say, Burt Lancaster 's dreamer in " Local Hero ," even with the addition of local anti-Western forces dead set against the salmon project.
As adapted from the Paul Torday novel by Oscar winning screenwriter Simon Beaufoy ("The Full Monty," "Slumdog Millionaire"), this one plays like "Local Hero" crossed with a less profane "In the Loop."
If you like this, try: “Chocolat” and “Local Hero” and the novel by Paul Torday…
Clearly, we’re meant to be back in the (literal) fish-out-of-water territory of “Local Hero,” or “The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain.”
There's a subtle magic to everything, reminiscent of Chelsom's own "Treacle" and "Hear My Song," and the Scottish fantasies of Bill Forsyth ("Gregory's Girl," "Comfort and Joy" and "Local Hero").
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If you can imagine the whimsicality of "Local Hero" crossed with the dark, British Isle ruralness of the "Red Riding" trilogy if its criminal elements had immigrated from "Fargo," you'll have an idea of McDonagh's deft tonal touch.
I could just as easily suggest that "The Guard" is "Hot Fuzz" by way of "Local Hero."
But odd details, like the kid riding a bike with his dog on a leash, and the quaint landscape are also reminiscent of the whimsical Scottish comedy "Local Hero."
(There are also meretricious variations on Bill Forsyth’s “Local Hero” (1983), which admirers of that masterpiece may well rue.)
What follows is a broad-strokes comedy drama pitched somewhere between the satire of Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog and the fish-out-of-water charm of Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero .
And we return to the joke a couple of times during the film, maybe the nearest indication of the kind of humor—let’s look in the direction of Bill Forsyth and Local Hero—that Stewart sometimes aims for with this political satire.
I appreciated “Irresistible” for not always choosing the most obvious direction, like having Gary go all “Local Hero” and fall in love with the backward ways (to jet-setters like him) of Wisconsin.