Patrick
2 stars
Director: Mandie Fletcher
Stars: Ed Skrein, Emilia Jones, Beattie Edmondson
Duration: 94 mins
Class: 12
KRS Releasing Ltd

Patrick is a feel-good film and I feel guilty for not liking it more than I actually did.  It has the cutest pug  as its protagonist and a likeable human character. Yet, for all its amiability, it never truly touches the heart the way that it’s meant to, relying on a hackneyed script that does little to develop plot or character.

Beattie Edmondson stars as Sarah Francis, a teacher who has inherited her grandmother’s pampered, pet pug; an inheritance that she neither wants nor has any idea how to handle.

After a series of misadventures (cue dog stealing food from the fridge and destroying her flat in the process) it’s not long before Sarah realises that dogs make very good guy magnets. In the meantime, she does her best to bond with the students at her new school – and is coerced by a fellow teacher into taking part in a charity fun run. And that just about sums what happens.

A tad muddled and can’t ultimately decide what it wants to be

Patrick was filmed and is set in and around London at its gorgeous best with its picture-perfect locations such as Hyde Park, Windsor and more basking in glorious sunshine, the bright backdrop a harbinger of its vibrant and breezy tone.

Yet, for all its outward sunniness, the script by Vanessa Davies is a tad muddled and can’t ultimately decide what it wants to be. Is it a story about how people bond with their pets? Is it a romantic comedy? Is it a tale of a singleton looking to improve her lot in love, and livelihood… while seeking the approval of her parents?

Well, a resounding yes to the latter and it does little to prevent comparisons to the 2001 comedy classic whose tropes it so clearly imitates – down to the sad binge-eating episodes on the sofa. Yet, it misses the mark pretty much on all counts, with a series of sub-plots which are sloppily tied together and fail to make up a cohesive whole.

It fails most obviously in the romcom stakes. After various adventures with Patrick in the park (after a cringeworthy scene in which Sarah finds herself literally pants down chatting to a neighbour) Sarah encounters two potential suitors. There is sexy, but smug, vet Oliver (Ed Skrein); and charming Ben (Tom Bennett)  and the film sets her up with both in standard meet-cute style.

Despite a disastrous first date with one and an off-putting secret she discovers about the other one, they both continue to appear sporadically and ultimately, the choice that she makes happens offscreen… unless I missed something.

In the meantime, in the course of Sarah’s attempts at romance, she becomes a confidante for a young student facing trouble at home. She nips the formation of a potential criminal gang in the bud, all the while trying to ignore a snotty colleague disparaging comments about her teaching methods. As for the fun run – well, the point is lost on me, given it just gives rise to an, um, running gag about how Sarah can’t run. So we are subjected to scenes of Sarah panting madly, leading to a predictable sports-movie type ending.

It’s a film that is simply all over the place and the most it evoked from me was an occasional smile – which was mainly at the dog’s antics and kudos to Harley, who appears as Patrick and both his understudies Roxy and Lui.

Edmonson is the daughter of the legendary Jennifer Saunders and fellow comedian Adrian Edmonson. She clearly has big shoes to fill. Yet, Patrick gives her no room in which to develop anything that resembles a fully-rounded character.

However, on the evidence of her affable nature, droll delivery and her consistent ability to take her prat-falls with aplomb, she will no doubt move on to bigger and better things.