Whisky Galore!

Instead of glorifying the amber liquid, Whisky Galore! is a love letter to an isolated community trapped in amber.

Granted, there’s not much reason to watch this Whisky Galore! so long as the 1949 version still exists. But it’s clear that everyone involved with this production had genuine affection for the material and for the very idea of old Scotland as a genteel utopia populated by kindly tippler

Oddly stiff where Alexander Mackendrick’s original village farce was infectiously tipsy, Gillies MacKinnon’s interpretation is twee, tweedy and rather timid about putting its own stamp on a now-quaint story.

A dry and surprisingly dull film, it is a comedy which doesn't induce a single laugh and a drama that doesn't engage emotionally or pull on the heartstrings at all.

It comes across as twee, comfy-cardigan film-making. And, Eddie Izzard’s best efforts notwithstanding, it simply isn’t very funny.

Directed by Gillies MacKinnon, this new version lacks the mischief of the original and feels like a sluggish museum piece.

Gone is the original’s joyful sense of mischief; what’s left is an inoffensive piece of twaddle that never fully appreciates the ineluctable bond between community spirit and a drop of the hard stuff.