Review of Submarine (2011) by Benjamin F — 11 Sep 2012

The IT Crowd's brilliant, hilarious Richard Ayoade makes his directorial debut with one of the funniest teen comedies in years. Once again, leave it to British talent to run circles around a particular genre often associated with American filmmaking.

Set in 1986, Swansea, Wales, Submarine follows teenager and unreliable narrator Oliver Tate (Played completely convincingly by Craig Roberts), who becomes infatuated with a troubled girl, Jordana Bevan (Played just as convincingly by Yasmin Paige), leading to a hilarious courtship including scenes of young love that happen to entail setting everything around them on fire. All while Oliver calmly narrates as though nothing unusual is going on. The other main storyline follows Oliver's worries about the apparent deterioration of his parents' (Noah Taylor and the always great Sally Hawkins) marriage, particularly on the account of his mother's growing interest in creepy new age guru Graham (Paddy Considine), whom Oliver naturally sees as a threat. As a clumsy, foolish teenager living a very separate life in his head from the one playing out around him in real life, over the course of the film, we get to enjoy watching Oliver make mistake after mistake, making us laugh the whole time.

With its original score by Andrew Hewitt and additional music by Arctic Monkeys front man Alex Turner, Submarine benefits from a perfectly suitable and enjoyable soundtrack. And the film's cinematography was carefully approached as so to draw you into an entirely believable portrait of mid-eighties Swansea with its meticulous camera work and lens filters.

Submarine works well as a subversion of everything that went wrong with the teen movie genre in the '90s after John Hughes effectively defined the genre so beautifully back in the '80s. That said, the film stands well on its own and doesn't feel like it's at all attempting to be a Hughes callback, either. It's not a story about beautiful people, and both of the lead kids are complete messes. But they're incredibly likeable, the cast hits every right note, and the script successfully strikes a careful chord between the delicacy of the particular age it sets out the capture and milking these eccentric and screwed up characters for all the comedy they're worth without going overboard. Submarine is easily one of my favorite comedies of the past year, and one I can wholeheartedly recommend. It won't change the world, but it'll make you laugh and smile the whole way through. I'm looking forward to seeing what else Ayoade makes next, now that The IT Crowd has come to an end.