Moon Dogs

Road movie Moon Dogs has some appealing elements – including an impressive Anton Newcombe score – but its script's lame attempts at humour and general lack of imagination fail to charm

Film Review by Josh Slater-Williams | 29 Aug 2017
Film title: Moon Dogs
Director: Philip John
Starring: Jack Parry-Jones, Christy O'Donnell, Tara Lee, Jamie Sives, Kate Bracken, Claire Cage, Tam Dean Burn, Shauna Macdonald, Denis Lawson, Niall Greig Fulton
Release date: 1 Sep
Certificate: 15

Moon Dogs sees a young Scotsman, Welshman and Irishwoman venture on a road trip from Shetland to Glasgow. Michael (Parry-Jones) wants to reunite with his increasingly distant girlfriend who’s in the city for university; his stepbrother Thor (O’Donnell) wants to meet his estranged mother; Caitlin (Lee), meanwhile, is set to play at Celtic Connections. On the way, they’re involved in all kinds of silly and sexy mishaps.

This Scottish-Welsh co-production sticks out in the current British film landscape thanks to being a road movie – a genre relatively uncommon in UK cinema for whatever reason. Is the journey it presents worth taking, though? 

Not so much, largely thanks to a screenplay rife with humour that very rarely lands and lacking in much invention to elevate its cookie-cutter narrative. There are some positives: the score, from Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, is occasionally arresting; Lee is charismatic, despite her sexually precocious chanteuse character being written as more a fantasy figure than a real person; and the vague echoes of Y Tu Mamá También have some appeal. [Josh Slater-Williams]

Released through Amber Content