Elfie Hopkins Review

14th Apr 2012

Jaime Winstone is the eponymous Elfie Hopkins, resident stoner and general nuisance, who apparently spends her days dreaming she is in Chinatown and The Big Sleep as a film noir investigator extraordinaire. So when the Gammons, an eccentric family, move in next door and start to disrupt her sleepy little village, she decides something is going on and is determined to find out what…

Only I don’t buy it. Everything feels forced with this wannabe Sam Spade – she seems no more familiar with the characters she purports to admire than she is with the idea of acting subtleties. Though it’s not a reference I enjoy making, she is very much of the ‘Joey from Friends’ acting school – totally cartoonish. Winstone is utterly out of her depth, without the charm or talent to pull off Elfie’s idiosyncrasies. Why is this North Londoner in deepest darkest Wales anyway? Her accent is an unexplained curiosity that only adds to the uncomfortable pairing of setting and protagonist. Some incredibly clumsy plot direction in the form of preposterous arguments that wouldn’t seem out of place in Midsomer Murders – all stage whispers and dramatic levelling of accusations – just make the time drag, rather than giving the film a helping hand. And just because Elfie turns out to be correct about the nefarious Gammon family and their special diet doesn’t mean anything. Mostly her suspicions arise from the Gammon’s late night drives, nothing more, which requires a rather large leap of imagination, or possibly stupidity.

Shoehorning Ray Winstone into the film seems to serve almost no purpose, unless you count being able to say “Ray Winstone is in my film” and if that’s the demographic you are aiming for, then you can keep the rest of your ideas, thanks Ryan Andrews. There are some good spots here and there. Aneurin Barnard is pretty perfect as Dylan, Elfie’s lovelorn friend and resident computer geek. Moping along behind her and enabling her strange games, he seems totally at ease. Rupert Evans also puts in a pretty good performance as the head of the Gammon household, by turns charming and threatening. His chummy relationship with his scruffy, nosy neighbour encourages the only glimpse of natural ability from poor beleaguered Winstone. The Gammon family also make an odd and faintly intriguing pack. The best of the lot is the anime-esque Ruby (Gwyneth Keyworth), who totters about in improbable outfits and huge eyelashes with very sharp Japanese swords and who has an interesting ‘collection’ in her pretty little lacquered boxes.

I am always a fan of copious amounts of gore, and there is a certain amount of that towards the chaotic rear end of the film. Unfortunately this is also where the film loses all sense of trying to be different and degenerates into something we have all seen time and again. Although most of the concepts newbie director Andrews aspires to don’t quite succeed, it is always preferable to see someone attempting something out of the ordinary.

Elfie Hopkins is an odd bit of British cinema. There is no denying Ryan Andrews is aiming high, but his desire for cultish bizarreness may be his downfall; with poor performances in major parts, it sadly ends up as an awkward mess.