‘The Ballad of Wallis Island’ is a crowd-pleasing folk-music comedy worth crowing about

At this year’s Sundance, I blushed every time someone asked about my favorite movies of the fest. I knew I’d have to include James Griffiths’ “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” a twee-sounding British comedy about a folk musician named Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) who plays a gig on a remote Welsh island for his No. 1 fan, Charles (Tim Key).

Sundance is all about championing bold new discoveries that will electrify the art form. But this sentimental charmer is literally acoustic: an expansion of the 2007 BAFTA-nominated short film “The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island,” which, like the feature, was directed by Griffiths with a script from Basden and Key. And it’s something almost as rare as a revelation: a crowdpleaser I’d recommend to everyone. And I have, from the grocery store clerks in Park City to my aunt to my metalhead pal — and now I’m tipping you off, too.

The core story has deepened over the decade and a half it took to enlarge it to full-length. Eighteen years ago, indie folk was ascendant in the U.K. with the formation of Mumford & Sons, and already on the airwaves in the States thanks to Sufjan Stevens, Fleet Foxes and the Plain White T’s. The short film’s incarnation of Herb McGwyer had more hair, more hope and more cool-kid credibility in pop culture. This older Herb knows his peak has passed. Once, he sold out shows as half of the folk duo McGwyer Mortimer; today, he’s a sell-out. His ex-bandmate and former girlfriend Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) stopped speaking to him ages ago in favor of expatriating to Portland, Ore., to sell chutney at farmers markets.

We don’t hear any of Herb’s post-duo commercial hits, but we’re meant to assume they’re godawful. His mood sure is. Having sullenly agreed to a £500,000 paycheck for one show, Herb gets drenched as soon as his boat wobbles into Wallis Island and spends most of the film with his bangs plastered pathetically to his forehead. He’s even grown himself a hipster mustache of despair.

Movies

Our 6 favorite films at this year’s Sundance

We came to Park City, Utah, with huge appetites for the 41st annual Sundance Film Festival. But we’re trimming down our top picks to the very best of the best.

Jan. 31, 2025

Herb’s patron, Charles, is a mysterious mega-millionaire who has spent a fortune for a private show. An apple-cheeked, motor-mouthed fanboy, he doesn’t fit the profile of, say, former Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi who managed to command performances from Mariah Carey and Beyoncé. Charles swears up and down his fortune isn’t from anything evil and Key’s smile is enough to convince you. He’s never done anything crueler than return a library book past due.

Charles used a chunk of his money to travel the world and settled down with souvenir magnets cluttering every inch of his fridge. “Katmandu was very much a case of Katman-did,” the lonely widower says, bubbling over with his need to impress his famous guest or really, just to talk to anybody. The composer Adem Ilhan has written a warm score of creaky horns and foot-stomping jangles to pair with Basden’s 16 original songs, but the film’s actual soundtrack is Charles’ constant chatter. (Key acted a minor role as the Pigeon Man in Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17,” but he launched his career as a comic poet.) Quips, puns, allusions — the nonsense tumbles out of him so fast, you barely have time to make sense of one joke before he’s onto the next.

I’d call “Wallis Island” a contender for the most quotable film of the year but there are so many good lines stacked on top of each other, and so much giggling on top of that, it’s impossible to keep up with Key’s wordplay. Presenting Herb with a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, he calls it a “Winona.” As in Ryder, as in a tour rider, as in the goodies a musician expects in their dressing room.

Only once does Charles find himself stymied. “Well, I’m speechless,” he says to fill the silence.

“Well, you’re not,” Herb rebuts.

Yet, there’s a cyclone of emotions inside this goofball that he never lets out — never ever. If he did, the film would get maudlin. But there are clues: Watch how furiously Charles plays tetherball when no one is looking.

Entertainment & Arts

When is Carey Mulligan putting out an album?

Jan. 26, 2025

Basden and Key have been performing together since they were on the Cambridge Footlights sketch team in 2001. (Key wasn’t a university student, but he pretended to be writing a PhD thesis on Nikolai Gogol — true story.) They’re comfortable making things awkward. That the film is shot like a drama prevents their odd-couple clash from getting cartoonish. Griffiths keeps most of the humiliations subtle, rather than sitcom large — say, having Herb wear Charles’ old tees, one of which is a McGwyer Mortimer tour shirt of his own face.

The audience will see the surprise arrival of Mulligan’s Nell coming like a warship on the horizon. His estranged ex’s appearance alongside her new American husband, Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen), gobsmacks this snob off his pedestal. Nell knows Herb well enough to be thoroughly unimpressed. When Herb reveals his new back tattoo, exposing that a guy who once prided himself on authenticity is now desperately chasing trends, Mulligan’s Nell barely cocks an eyebrow.

“Cool,” she says. Her neutrality is brutal.

Mulligan has been edging toward comedy without committing to it. She’s great in that sweet spot of playing either narcissistic fools (like “Saltburn’s” Poor Dear Pamela) or here, a woman who shows up with a game plan to be confident and droll. Although Mulligan is the newbie within this filmmaking team, she probably knows the folk-star world more intimately than any of them — she’s been married to the singer of Mumford & Sons since 2012.

The script promptly sends her fictional spouse off on a birding expedition so that Herb and Nell can get slowly and persuasively reacquainted. (Pun-happy Charles would no doubt call the conveniently exiled husband’s trip a McGuffin of puffins.) With just one other character worth mentioning, a daffy shop clerk played by “Fleabag’s” Sian Clifford, there’s only so many moves a story this small can make. The film can’t afford to be shy about contrivances, but it’s only willing to cheat on facts, not feelings.

You can imagine how things will play out and you’d be close but not exact. Griffiths doesn’t fight against the formula, he just takes our expectations for every scene and gingers them up a little, the movie version of a cozy sweater threaded with tinsel. It’s the music that takes things from pleasant to powerful — not just indie folk’s earnest refrains, but the way everyone hides behind the songs’ pretense of candor while keeping their own walls sky-high. All three leads croon along with these pure emotions, each one believing they’ve grown to know each other, either through their own lyrics or Charles’ nonstop blather. Yet whenever one claims to know what another person wants, they’re usually wrong.

Key, in particular, plays all the these layers beautifully. Blunt as his Charles is, he proves to be the most guarded of the trio; there are unsung stanzas of sadness in his eyes. He might open up if his heroes asked. Except he’s the geek, the hanger-on, the money man, so nobody does. Fandom isn’t painless. But “Wallis Island” is worth applause.