Gregory's Two Girls

He COULD never end a movie well...they always came to a grinding, heart-deadening halt.

But we forgive, given the actors, the characters, unselfconscious dialogue and charming natural feel. The wealth of talent from the Scottish theatre groups at the time.

The unsatisfactory phone box or Caracas sign marked a depressing end to otherwise enjoyable movies.

The original Gregory's Girl outpaced The Clash of the Titans. Perhaps deservedly so, but that movie had a structure...and a proper ending.

I think the fact that the deadening halt came quite early in this movie reveals its quality. Which is a shame given the quality of the actors. I believe Carly McKinnon stopped acting after this - I wish her well in Toronto - but she had that natural feel from earlier films and the makings of a very fine performer.

Add to this the uncomfortable - and uncomfortable in the 80s - creepiness of some of the themes and I don't think we have a winner here.

That, and the approaching-the-original "Weather Report on Diazepam" soundtrack, left me feeling entirely empty.

John Gordon Sinclair returns as Gregory Underwood. Bill Forsyth returns as writer/director. Gregory is back at his school now as the awkward English teacher fantasizing about his student Frances. Bel Jordan (Maria Doyle Kennedy) is a co-worker who is throwing herself at him without any success. He's a sofa activist. With his talks as inspiration, Frances and Doug investigates Gregory's former schoolmate Fraser Rowan (Dougray Scott) of exporting electronic torture machines.

I love the original which has an innocent charm and the awkward teenage hormones. Gregory is still obsessed with teen girls despite being 20 years later. It is very off-putting. I'm not even complaining about the disappearance of the love story with Susan although that would be a good sequel. I thought the torture machines idea is absolutely ridiculous. Everything seems wrong and flies in the face of the charming original. Then I surrender to the silly sincerity of the torture machines search. It keeps getting sillier and more sincere at the same time with the arrival of Maddy and her arrogant boyfriend. I had to laugh at the turn. The characters grow on me. Eventually I'm going along with the movie but the final ending pissed me off. It is the pettiest of vandalism and I was expecting the torture machine in the back of the truck. This is quite a step down from the original.

Gregory Underwood is a secondary school teacher in Scotland now but his relationships with women is no stable than before. Despite the very clear attention of colleague Bel, Gregory prefers to stay at home watching Chomsky tapes and worrying about the general state of the world. Unknown to anyone else he has a major crush on a girl in one of his classes – football player Frances. Despite the risk, when she appears to come onto him he responds only to find that she just wants to talk to him about the fact that a local electronics company appears to be manufacturing torture equipment.

This film received bad reviews when it came out and I suspect many reviewers (like myself) just disliked the idea of a sequel to such a famous film after so many years had gone by. Of course opening the film with a sex scene between a teacher and a young pupil that is played for laughs was never going to be that good a move – especially in a time when paedophilia is the number one topic for a tabloid witch hunt on any given day. And so I found myself at the start of a very strange film indeed, one that has a teacher/pupil relationship at the core and stuff about corporations and globalisation etc around the edges – suffice to say that this is not just a retread of Gregory's Girl for the sake of making some extra money. However, why Forsyth chose to place this story within a sequel was a mystery to me because it does stand alone so much there appears to be no other reason to connect the two other than raising the money to make it.

The plot is a strange mix of issues and relationships and it is certainly never dull but this is not to say that it all works because it most certainly does not. It is a messy affair that starts off with the crush but gradually forgets it and instead wanders onto the issue of corporate social responsibility and globalisation but does it in a way that doesn't really ring true or allow for a clear message to be delivered. It is still interesting and I stayed with it for the couple of things that it was trying to do but even at my kindest I can't pretend that it worked out because it didn't. The plot doesn't flow that well and although it is interesting it doesn't stick in the mind as a good narrative or one that pulls anything in particular off.

The cast are OK and seem to get the light tone of the film even if they don't always seem to know where it is all going either. Sinclair plays his usual character well and manages to keep the audience onside (not as easy as it sounds in this film); however again, did we need him to be called "Gregory" or was it just to get funding? McKinnon is surprisingly assured and gives a very strong performance. Between the two of them they make their scenes work really well, with both of them coming from their different angles well. Support is so-so but not really any better than that – Kennedy, Scott, Murtagh and others are very much secondary to requirements and their performances are a notch below the lead two. Forsyth's direction is good and he injects the film with a feel that is recognisable as him.

Overall though this is not a film to dislike for being an unnecessary sequel because, in fairness, it is actually a very brave attempt to do something different that unfortunately doesn't come off. The challenging relationship drama that could have been so impacting is gradually lost in a bigger story that never hangs together. Deserves points for trying but sadly it is just not that good a film.

Forsyth returns to the site of the small-scale comedy that made his now-battered name with this somewhat ambitious but messy and incompletely developed chronicle of a teacher who talks about responsibility and activism but practices only stagnation, until the discovery that a local computer company is manufacturing torture devices for Third World dictatorships - and the galvanizing influence of a pupil about whom he has erotic fantasies - bring him to belated life. It's easy enough to see what Forsyth had in mind, but the movie isn't at all well integrated - the Big Ideas float like patches of oil on a stagnant loch. The two girls of the title are both merely wet dreams of different kinds (the movie attempts to forge a parallel between his political/social and his personal maturity - the latter of which is achieved by having actress Kennedy hang around in desperation until he's ready for her "ripe" charms); the movie gets its biggest laugh from the well-timed use of the word "beaver"; the happy ending is a total cheat; even the setting isn't particularly well evoked...on the whole it's not likely to significantly revive Forsyth's reputation.

A shift in outlook is neccesary to enjoy modern British films, one that somehow allows them to be seen in their own right and for their own qualities rather than by the criteria that American films are judged. Britfilm has to try hard to be gritty and finds it hard to make it, but at warmth British films can lord it over their otherwise overwhelming competitor.

This film fails not in its content but only in attaching itself to the predeccesor, so allowing it to be all to easily seen as the work of star and director somewhere near the end of their tethers. It's a couple of decades later, Gregory teaching and this time with two girls on his mind. He teaches at his school railing against human rights abuses. When students he's fired up find abuses in their midst he must face whether he's just all talk.

This is a subversive film in that there's not the usual worldly character of any American movie that you expect to do whatever he does, but a naive man boy who may still put everything on the line for principles. Maybe. It's certainly no protest-by-numbers though, being too warm. Where U.S. film may seem realistic because they're urban and gritty, this and other British films of recent years - those that don't try to match America for visceral thrills - are real because British humour reveals truths.