This review contains spoilers for “The Ballad of Wallis Island.”
You’ll laugh, cringe and become misty-eyed.
In “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” which premiered on January 25 at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, a two-time lottery winner, Charles (Tim Key), uses his big win to bring his favorite band, McGwyer Mortimer, back together on a remote island. Behind this absurd plot and lighthearted comedy, director James Griffiths shows a story of loss and reconciliation with one’s past.
Cue in the disgruntled rockstar, Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden). With salt air blowing across his Ray-Ban shades, he arrives in a comically tiny boat to the fictitious Welsh island, Wallis Island. He is greeted by the endearingly eccentric Charles, who clumsily pulls him, suede blazer and all, into the ocean.
McGwyer, expecting the usual rockstar treatment, — chauffeur service, luxury hotel, a large audience for this $500,000 paying gig — is met with quite the atypical experience. He finds he’s staying at Charles’s house on a quirky island, which consists mostly of the man with the tiny boat and the shopkeeper Amanda (Sian Clifford), who, to accentuate its remoteness, offers McGwyer canned rice pudding to soak his wet phone for the lack of dry rice supply.
The gig? Actually, it’s just for Charles — probably the band’s biggest superfan. He constantly plays McGwyer Mortimer vinyl to the irritation of McGwyer, who presses that he has a “new sound” now.
There are plenty of comedic one-liners or witty quips as Charles’ loveable but cringey social awkwardness bristles against McGwyer’s brooding self-importance. It is amusing to imagine co-writers Key and Basden writing their lines such as Charles’, “Wowzers. Wowzers in my trousers.”
Then, unbeknownst to McGwyer, his former band member and romantic partner, Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan), suddenly shows up. Oh, and her new husband, Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen). It is not quite a Fleetwood Mac-level reunion, but the tensions rise as McGwyer is hoodwinked into a reunion performance with Mortimer.
However, Charles has an underlying motive. The big gig is actually in commemoration of his late wife Marie, a McGyer Mortimer superfan herself, on the fifth anniversary of her passing. While Charles maintains his jolly demeanor, his tell — rapid blinking — cues the audience into the introspective moments he thinks of Marie and subsides his emotion.
The film becomes a beautiful medley of the former couple and bandmates facing their past together, broken by the comedic reliefs of Charles and sprinklings of his hidden emotions. There are, of course, the tense rehearsal scenes as the two who have gone on different paths, one, a solo artist, and the other, a new chutney business owner, do not see eye to eye.
The global star, McGwyer, becomes easily defensive of his new materials. He argues that although he made a commercial song, he himself is NOT, in fact, commercial. Although the audience never hears his solo work, the album cover for “Feat.” with money thrown in the air as McGwyer is sat on a throne with overly photoshopped teeth, perhaps gives a clue.
And then, you can almost feel the “happily-ever-after” on the horizon. The tension drops for the island’s biggest uncelebrated holiday, Seaman’s Day. Against the ocean bluffs, the trio releases lanterns with written wishes into the sunset sky. Charles may just realize his dream of reuniting the band and romance within McGwyer Mortimer.
Well, without revealing the entire movie, I hate to burst the bubble of the hopeless romantics, but things unravel quickly and we are brought back to what I believe the film to really be about — these two men, Charles and McGwyer, who in all their opposing natures, trying to grapple with the same thing: a lost past.
The film’s final stretch is full of equally laughable moments between Key and Basden’s characters alongside more emotional sentiment as the two characters grieve their pasts, eventually together. Although there isn’t your typical fairytale happy-ending, the finale is equally satisfying. It has all the ingredients of a feel-good movie with the perfect mix of comedy and a heartfelt backstory. You’ll leave with the warm fuzzies as you wipe the remnants of a watery eye.
Perhaps that is why it felt a bit more commercial itself than the usual bite of a Sundance indie. But likely that’s what they’re hoping for as the film preps for its theater release with Focus Features on March 28.