Martin Gooch (director)
Three Wolves (studio)
12 (certificate)
96 (length)
13 October 2014 (released)
15 October 2014
Martin Gooch’s most recent geek flick The Search For Simon is a sci-fi comedy/drama with an unavoidable Englishness. Documenting the protagonist David’s almost life long search for his missing brother, who he believes to have been abducted by aliens, Gooch’s film is a key proponent of his self-professed style of “kitchen sink weirdness”. Asserting its thinly veiled pastiche of The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Monty Python and Doctor Who, The Search for Simon is a tonally confused snoozefest, lulling its audience to sleep with its witless jokes, poor performances and undeveloped storyline.
The film’s central character David is a middle aged UFO enthusiast, frantically searching for his long lost brother who he has been told has been abducted by aliens. Having won a large amount of money in the ‘UFO Lottery’, his search leads him on a wild goose chase, consorting with faux UFO experts, charging extortionate prices for hashed leads on the whereabouts of his brother. With the search consuming his every waking hour, David’s few fellow nerdy chums are beginning to resent him, ousting him from the group, leaving him alienated (no pun intended). Coupled with his callous alcoholic mother and entirely awkward nature, David is a sorry sap which Gooch is keen for his audience to sympathise with.
The film’s main conceit is that it is nothing more than a silly sci-fi, churning out forgettable yet inoffensive gags, perhaps occasionally hitting the mark and inducing a soft chuckle. However, the film cannot even claim this frankly base laurel. With an insensibly tacky portrayal of David’s attempted suicide, David is invited by his psychologist Eloise to attend her support group, tactfully entitled “The Failed Suicide Group xP”, an unbelievably ridiculing title for a group addressing a wholly serious issue. Keen not just to exploit the mentally afflicted, the film sifts for narrative capital in David’s mother’s alcoholism. In a scene in which Eloise visits David’s mother’s house in order to get information on David for her book, Eloise is shown to innocently offer her a bottle of rosé in an effort to coax the gossip from her. The film’s portrayal of these events as innocent and fitting with the film’s light hearted tone reveals the film's pretty sinister ignorant writing and underbelly.
According to the film’s screenwriter Simon Birks, the script was written in 4 weeks, excerpts being sent back and forth between Birks and Gooch whilst Birks was on his holidays in Italy. In frank terms, this emphatically shows, the script being a comedicly undeveloped risible piece of narrative. However bad a script may be, there is at least the opportunity for it to be saved by the performances it inspires. It is perhaps unsurprising therefore that the cast have in this case perhaps paid a deserving amount of lip service to it. With the exception of Millie Reeves who plays Sally, David’s romantic interest, the film’s performances leave a lot to be desired.
The Search for Simon has an evident love for British comedy and sci-fi. Incorporating the silliness of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and the comic whims of Monty Python, the resulting film fails to give any of these esteemed works justice.