Albatross (2011)

A drama about a precocious young woman, who claims to be the descended of Arthur Conan Doyle, inadvertently becomes intertwined with the lives of a small family running a hotel, when she embarks on an affair with the father as well as befriending the eldest daughter. A disillusioned writer suffering from writers block, the nagging wife whose job it is to make everyone life a misery, the daughter who is so brilliant she is often ignored and of course the girl with the facade of a wild child, but beneath the surface is very damaged and riddled with pain. Sounds similar right? I’m not surprised; you can draw parallels with every aspect of this film with probably 99% of the films that have gone before it. A lot of things in Niall MacComick film go largely undeveloped, unexplored or merely ignored, for example the wife is set up as a an actress falling on hard times yet we rarely address how these short comings professionally impact her marriage. In the finally denouncement of the film, the father makes it known that he thinks his daughter is boring and personality less, but that too is quickly brushed under the carpet . Albatross is unimaginative film, wrapped up in a cliché that gives you a nasty taste of déjà vu in the mouth the whole way through its mundane running.