Comfort and Joy (1984 | StudioCanal) - February 29, 2016

[UncleBuckWild]

Comfort and Joy

Release Date: February 29, 2016


http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0185P7HJS

[UncleBuckWild]

Clare Grogan shares sweet memories...
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/whats-o...mories-7399868

[Millibar]

Will be picking this up when the price drops a little

[BigNickUK]

Originally Posted by Millibar

Will be picking this up when the price drops a little

Be warned if you don't like grain...it is bad

[pro-bassoonist]

Comfort and Joy Blu-ray REVIEW



Fantastic restoration and presentation from StudioCanal






Pro-B

[klutes]

Wonderful wee movie, that has never really went away, think it was never released on any disc format due to baggage with the real ice cream wars in Glasgow.
Will pick this up when its under a tenner!

[DaBargainHunta]

I'm probably the only person on Blu-ray.com who was half-hoping it was this.

[Babu93]

Good to see Bill Forsyth's films getting good treatment on Blu-ray. But Local Hero is long overdue.

[Martoto]

Nae cooncil cake?

[Aclea]

Originally Posted by klutes

Wonderful wee movie, that has never really went away, think it was never released on any disc format due to baggage with the real ice cream wars in Glasgow.

It did come out on DVD in 2004 from Cinema Club with an audio commentary by Forsyth and Clive Parsons that hasn't been carried over to the BD.

[Pablo944]

This a fine film which I have purchased on BR but why has Local Hero not been released? It's a better film and I know that there is an HD version out there.

[GlacierTuba]

Here's some cobbled together drivel from my Letterboxd diary that you may wish to read about this film. It was written a while ago but here it is anyways.





Comfort and Joy was a blind buy I watched earlier this week. I'm familiar with director Bill Forsyth and his previous work (none of which I've actually seen, just know of) that includes Gregory's Girl, probably the most well known title, and Housekeeping, which those who love a bit of Criterion action will likely know about. Comfort and Joy appears to be one of his films that's more under the radar than his other works, and that's a shame, because what we have here is a surprisingly fun little film that's also packed with little titbits of information and wrapped up in to a reasonably breezy 106 minutes.

It's fast approaching Christmas 1984, and Comfort and Joy focuses our attention on local radio DJ Dickie Bird. One evening, after dinner, his kleptomaniac girlfriend Maddy decides to tell Dickie that she's leaving him. There and then she cleans out their apartment and leaves our Dickie on his lonesome just in time for Christmas. Poor sod.

It's not all doom and gloom though as our loveable miserable sod decides not to dwell on lost love (at least for the next few minutes) and instead takes his shiny new BMW out to a rough looking estate to buy an ice cream (as any rational person would). Venturing out to buy an ice cream on a rather sketchy looking estate from a sketchy looking ice cream van would prove a life changing moment for Dickie as he accidentally stumbles upon an ice cream van rival gang war and thus our story properly begins...

Comfort and Joy is a genuinely intriguing and often funny film. It's humour isn't delivered in the typical comedy film fashion (mainstream gags, action, mainstream gags, action, mainstream gags, the end etc). It's humour is delivered rather wry and dry (as Thom Yorke might say), it might appeal more to UK audiences because of this (that whole thing about folks maybe not 'getting it' if you know what I mean). Comfort and Joy is never really offensive in its deployment of humour, it just might not be what folks are expecting to get out of a typical comedy film. That's a shame really as I would hope more people would be prepared to give this film a go as it's genuinely charming, if a little stumbly in it's pacing.

Bill Paterson does well here in his turn as Dickie Bird and is supported well by Eleanor David (Maddy) and love interest Clare Grogan as Charlotte (credited in this film as C P Grogan, which I haven't seen her credited under before, the P is just her middle name initial). Music fans will be keen to learn that the soundtrack is by Dire Straits head honcho Mark Kuh-nop-fuh-lerr! He does use a couple of music cues here from a couple of Straits tracks, Telegraph Road and Private Investigations. The rest of the soundtrack reminded me a lot of the Chicken Shack soundtrack in 1986 hyperanime OAV Urban Square. Jazzy and sometimes melancholic, very noir-esque in places. Kuh-nop-fuh-lerr (who loves Kuh-norr stock cubes because they've got the Kuh-know-how) does a fairly juicy job with the score, I think it complements the film nicely.

It's a shame that Comfort and Joy was a flop upon release, however there is mention in the cast and director interviews on the Blu Ray disc that the film couldn't have been released at a worse time. For in the Glasgow area of 1984, there were genuine ongoing problems with ice cream vans, dubbed the Ice Cream Van Wars that involved genuine criminal activity and turf wars between ice cream van drivers. You can find out more information about this over on Wikipedia. The fact this was an ongoing problem in the area apparently blighted the release of Comfort and Joy which was viewed by some as bad taste in making an innocent comedy film about ice cream van gang wars when there were real problems going on at the time.

A couple of small titbits you may also enjoy include the photo pirched on radio station director Hillary's desk. It's actually a genuine photo of himself as a young man in the Navy in which he served between 1941 and 1945. There's also a gold disc hanging in Dickie Bird's office at the radio station. The disc actually belongs to co-star Clare Grogan's band Altered Images and was awarded for their 1982 album Happy Birthday (the title song of which you may very well know from the 1984 film Sixteen Candles). Stick around for the end credits too in order to hear Dickie Bird making a pigs ear of a radio commercial recording!

I quite enjoyed Comfort and Joy. I went in blind, expectations set very low and came out the other side having watched a fairly decent little low budget escapade. It's not anything groundbreaking or to litter with awards. In fact I think the film could have done a little better by following the storyline between Dickie and Maddy a bit more. It's a fun enough little film though and certainly worth a view. It may ring more bells of nostalgia for viewers who grew up in the area around that time, particularly with the real life events that sadly stunted what legs this film may have had to carry it for slightly better box office success.

Well worth a view.

[Sifox211]

Nice review!

Trivia about Clare Grogan: Equity, the UK actor's union, insists on unique names; there was already a Claire Grogan in Equity when, erm, Clare Grogan went to join, so she had to use her initials CP Grogan instead.