Peter Chelsom's comedies work best when he gives his actors time and keeps the sentiment light. We like his warmth, but his determination to make everyone endearing sometimes gets in the way.
Fi1m perspective
Ned Beatty seems thoroughly pleased to be Josef Locke in Hear My Song (1991), and Chelsom gives his expansive comic performance time to amuse us. We warmed to him almost at once, because his pleasure in playing the singer makes the fuss surrounding Locke easy to understand. These are the moments when Chelsom's confidence in his actors pays off. He can stop working quite so hard to make the story charming.
The film was his feature debut, followed by Funny Bones (1995), set in Blackpool and featuring Jerry Lewis and Lee Evans. Comedy traditions, performance and the proximity of laughter to sadness recur in his work; Blackpool's end-of-the-pier entertainment helps explain that interest. The later move into Hollywood brought Serendipity (2001), with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale, and Shall We Dance? (2004). The chance encounters of Serendipity fit a director already inclined to believe that romance can put things right.
In Hear My Song, the useful restraint often comes from the people he casts. Adrian Dunbar, who co-wrote the screenplay with Chelsom, gives club owner Micky O'Neill an awkwardness that keeps his enthusiasm from becoming merely tiresome. Tara Fitzgerald's Nancy Doyle is less strenuous in her appeal, and the romance benefits from it. Chelsom understands the value of a performer who need not insist on being liked. Elsewhere, he pushes the whimsy harder than these performances need.
Editor Martin Walsh helps by letting the comic performances finish before moving on, rather than hurrying to reassure us that another joke is coming. That patience matters in a film so dependent on fondness for its characters. John Altman's music encourages the romance, usually agreeably, but offers too little restraint when the sentiment becomes heavy. We do not need the extra prompting when Dunbar and Beatty have already made these people worth our time. Start with Hear My Song for those two, and allow for a director who sometimes asks for affection a little too often.
Biography
Peter Chelsom is a British film director, screenwriter and former actor. Born in Blackpool, Lancashire, he trained at the Central School of Drama in London and appeared in leading stage roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre, as well as in various film and television productions.
He began directing with the short film Treacle (1988) before making his feature debut with Hear My Song (1991), for which he also wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay. Subsequent feature credits include Funny Bones (1995), The Mighty (1998), Serendipity (2001), Shall We Dance? (2004), Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009) and Hector and the Search for Happiness (2014). Between 1985 and 1998 he ran the film course at the Central School of Drama.
