There are some British films which are basically the convenience-store sandwich of big-screen entertainment. Cinema’s equivalent of the 24-hour-garage tuna mayo pitta bread. And that, sadly, is the case with The Nan Movie, a truly horrendous and depressing film about Catherine Tate’s sweary old-lady character from her sketch show, in a storyline stretched out to a brutal hour and a half.
It arrives in UK cinemas with no fanfare and an uneasy lack of clarity about who the director is supposed to be. Some official listings give it as former Donmar Warehouse artistic director Josie Rourke and some say Tate herself, but there’s nothing on the closing credits, other than to say that both are producers. Was this how British audiences felt when they stumbled out of the cinema having watched Holiday on the Buses in 1973, or Keith Lemon: The Film in 2012? Did they also suspect that their profound depression and self-reproach were secretly shared by the film-makers themselves?
