The Blue Boy

An eerie tale of love and deception set in the Scottish Highlands. Emma Thompson and Adrian Dunbar compellingly portray the roles of a troubled couple about to have their first child. The past, not only their own but that of a parallel couple from the past, become enmeshed through dream, reality and gossip.

The use of water imagery pervades this film from the blue mist at night to its tragic watery conclusion.

As this engaging short film is set in the Gaelic speaking Highlands of Scotland some attention to the indigenous language of this region would have assisted in credibility and continuity.

Emma Thompson stars in a nothing horror movie (for television), about as mediocre as you can get. In the cult world of horror, fans often enjoy awfulness, but there's no interest at all in as uneventful an effort as "The Blue Boy".

How such a script got greenlighted is mystifying; perhaps having Emma in the package (she had previously made a student film titled "Tin Fish" with untalented writer-director Paul Murton) was the secret. Yet she was coming off huge success in Merchant-Ivory's "Howards End" and "Remains of the Day" when she made this clunker.

The story and characters in "The Blue Boy" are negligible; it's simply a supernatural tale of the title character (seen in nightmare sequences) haunting an inn in Scotland where Emma & hubby Ian Dunbar go on a vacation. The location is starkly beautiful and remote, and guess what - they're the only guests there. Innkeeper Eleanor Bron (another truly great actress wasted) fills Emma's mind with a supernatural tale, and pregnant Emma is quite susceptible.

Dunbar is two-timing Emma with a girlfriend (Joanna Roth) and infidelity is part of the Blue Boy story, too. Poor continuity and coincidence gets the two ladies in conflict, and the dull movie only momentarily comes to life near the end when Emma & Adrian have a violent fight.

Thompson's actress mom plays her mother here, another nothing role. And leading man Dunbar is a complete blank, making it impossible to believe that two lovely women are in love with him. Movie's ending is poorly staged and and anticlimactic.

The movie is nothing but a cliché - man cheats on wife and mistress won't let go. What's more, it's a pathetic version at that, since we have seen a lot better ones (remember "Fatal Attraction," for example?). The addition of the titular Blue Boy does not do anything to help, especially since that part of the story is so elusive and practically irrelevant. The ending of the movie is painfully obvious. Indeed, it might have actually helped if Mr. Paul Murton *had* come up with some kind of twist. Sadly, however, it almost seems as if he suffers from some serious *personal* issues with his own father! That's about the only thing that explains the rather illogical ending in which the result seems to run contrary to how the story was developing. Mr. Murton really should seek some counseling to help resolve his issues in real life, rather than forcing the viewers to have to suffer through his ridiculous "resolutions" on screen.

In conclusion, (with a deep sigh) - what a HUGE was 55 minutes from my life... :/