Dad's Dead (2002)

Regaling us with memories of his Liverpudlian childhood, this tells us of a man who's relationship with his best friend ''Jonno'' ended up having quite a bearing on his own life. These two lads were joined at the hip and were always larking around together, but as they grew older "Jonno" moved on from their harmless antics with some Flake 99s to much more brutish behaviour with pigeons and cats; a whopping great lie and then finally to an incident that saw the latter man become innocently incarcerated for a fairly heinous crime. That's perhaps what is most striking about this rather depressing feature. Even though our storyteller doesn't appear too bear many grudges, the whole film has an unpleasant thuggishness to it that is completely devoid of even the darkest humour as it rolls out a plot that is really quite grim. That said, I did like the style of those reflections as it mixes realtime action with some mischievous animation and the often obscured nature of the photography suggested to me an element of shame from both for behaviour that does get under your skin. It is worth a watch, and I suppose it does illustrate just how people can react when they are bored and without any sense of purpose or proportion, but I didn't love this.