GFF 2013: Songs for Amy

Konrad Begg’s debut feature concerns a low-rent songsmith, Sean (Maguire), who inadvertently leaves his bride-to-be, Amy (Lorna Anderson), stranded at the alter after a night of hedonism with his gormless band-mates. What drags this lame effort down from mediocre to diabolical is its hilarious pretentiousness. The simple will they/won’t they plot is smashed into fragments and framed around Sean’s recording of the titular album designed to win Amy back – it turns out the way to this woman’s heart is an ugly grab-bag of tunes that sound like rejected Snow Patrol B-sides.

While watching events confusingly unfurl, one gets the impression that Begg took inspiration from Last Year in Marienbad, but decided what Alain Resnais' classic needed was a generous helping of fart gags and scenes of Celts getting stoned. Far funnier than any of the film's reefer madness slapstick, however, is a risible dream sequence in which Sean wanders through a desert that’s bare but for, I kid you not, a white stallion galloping in slow motion across the frame. Never mind songs for Amy, what this film needs is a lament. [Jamie Dunn]