Off The Rails: Three Countries And A Funeral

By Liam Lacey

Rating: D

The British comedy-drama Off the Rails opens with the London funeral of a middle-aged woman named Anna, and an awkward eulogy by her mother Diana (a cameo by Judi Dench).

After the funeral, Diana meets with three of Anna’s friends: Liz (Sally Phillips), Kate (Jenny Seagrove), and Cassie (Kelly Preston) and hands them tickets to a European rail trip through France, Italy, and Spain in memory of their college graduation trip three decades before.

There are a couple of conditions. Anna has also requested they take her 18-year-old daughter Maddie (Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips) along with them. The whole trip must be completed in the next five days, so the women can get to Palma, Mallorca to witness the twice-a-year phenomenon when the sun shines through both glass windows of the island’s famous cathedral, which a character in the film calls “God’s disco ball.”

Though the girls’ trip plot of Off the Rails is multi-derivative, its most obvious model is the cheerful-tearful ensemble dramas from Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and A Funeral, Love, Actually, and Mama Mia Here We Go Again) in which the prospect of death makes people nicer to one another.

To be fair to Curtis, Off the Rails is more like a Richard Curtis make-your-own-dramedy at-home game, with each character’s personality stamped on a card and they roll the dice to see which complications ensue.

There’s Kate (a disappointed cynic), Liz (a control-freak family doctor), and Cassie (blowsy, hard-drinking American soap opera star). A series of theoretically funny but in practice mind-numbingly dull events unfold. A snooty French clothing store clerk is humiliated, passports are lost, copious wine is consumed, odd forms of transportation are used, and old grievances and betrayals are raised and resolved.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

There’s time for a couple of romantic flings (Ben Miller, Franco Nero). Meanwhile, the youngest member of the group, Maddie — who meets a cute Italian boy — simply disappears from the story for a substantial portion of the movie.

One final exasperating note: In an effort to catch some of the Mama Mia box office mojo with its ABBA soundtrack, Off the Rails is packed with songs from Blondie, and though the characters occasionally sing along with the songs, the movie isn’t ambitious enough to be a musical.

That sort of works when the women sing Anna’s favourite song, “Dreaming,” but feels bombastically absurd when the soundtrack blasts out “Heart of Glass” as we see the sea view of the Palma Cathedral, a Catalan gothic masterpiece which the poet Robert Graves once called a “golden fortress.”

The movie is dedicated to Kelly Preston, who died in 2020, adding a genuine note of melancholy to the contrived one in the film.

Off the Rails. Directed by Jules Williamson. Written by Jordan Walker. Starring Kelly Preston, Jenny Seagrove, Sally Phillips, Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips, Ben Miller, and Franco Nero. Available on VOD and digital platforms December 10.