The Ballad of Wallis Island
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Amazon Prime VideoAn eccentric lottery winner who lives alone on a remote island tries to make his fantasies come true by getting his favourite musicians to perform at his home.
Amazon Prime VideoAn eccentric lottery winner who lives alone on a remote island tries to make his fantasies come true by getting his favourite musicians to perform at his home.
Sketches Reviews Gatsby with the Dad Jokes A study of British eccentricity and reticence that uses its remote island setting to explore the extremities of grief and the inability to truly repeat the past, The Ballad of Wallis Island (James Griffiths, 2025) is a proper tearjerker. But like the best ones, it deserves every single drop; one cutesy folk song at a time. Our hero is Herb McGwyer ...
A damp, rather depressing dirge of unmemorable tunes, unflattering clothing and unexceptional scenery, “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” directed by James Griffiths and expanded from Basden and Key’s 2007 short film, “The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island,” strains to fill its running time. Coaxing mild amusement from Charles’s oddball cluelessness and Herb’s reliance on the island’s lone telephone kiosk — shades of “Local Hero” (1983)— the movie fails to police the boundary between sweet and soppy.
