When attending a UK film festival, you inevitably run into films that display some very tired clichés about the British Working Class. As the latest word from director Janis Pugh, Chuck Chuck Baby deserves to put them all to shame as a film scripted entirely from tired tropes and ideas. As though she asked ChatGPT to write a queer romance after feeding it ten years’ worth of The Sun.
So, we have a film that bizarrely tries to mix musical theatre and social realism, telling the story of Helen (Louise Brealey) an utterly downtrodden factory worker, relegated to the status of handmaiden by her gammon-faced ex-husband Gary (Celyn Jones). Lodging in Gary’s spare room to care for his ailing mother Gwen (Sorcha Cusack), Helen’s been rendered all but invisible by the spectre of his new baby with a younger woman. Which is great for thematic resonance but terrible for building a compelling protagonist. It’s impossible to relate to someone so pathetic that they almost disappear into the wallpaper. You might as well try to empathise with a literal wet wipe.
Helen’s only respite is her night shifts at the local chicken factory where she and her boisterous gal-pals routinely burst into jukebox renditions of the songs from their youth. Until that is Helen’s school crush Jo (Annabel Scholey) returns after twenty years. Bringing with her promise of returning her affections, if only Helen can summon them back to the surface. What follows is a paper-thin, if sweet love affair, Lacking in the intense passion of a Portrait of a Lady on Fire or the witty chemistry of A Single Man.
Chuck Chuck Baby isn’t a bad film as such, just a frustratingly empty one, as vacuous at the hills of North Wales in which it’s set. Helen and Jo’s romance ebbs and flows with the demands of the script. Any adversity is almost entirely contrived by the cartoonish stereotypes that make up the supporting cast. Characters speak a lot about their thoughts and feelings, but the film never seems to actually let us into their interior lives.
Like the handful of musical numbers it features Chuck Chuck Baby doesn’t have the technical prowess to deliver the genuine emotional beats it wants to hit.
