In the acclaimed series “Succession,” which centers on an absurdly wealthy family constantly at each other’s throats over who will take control of their massive media empire, one of the most memorable scenes came when Brian Cox’s menacing, manipulative patriarch Logan Roy tells his children he loved them, but that they were “not serious people.” It’s the last thing he ever said to them.
In Cox’s directorial debut “Glenrothan,” which centers on a less wealthy family that’s still frequently at each other’s throats over who will take control of their whisky distillery, there are no such devastating, well-written scenes. Instead, the only thing that’s fundamentally unserious is the film itself.
This lack of seriousness is not for lack of trying. If anything, the film is constantly trying — too hard. Each scene feels overwritten to within an inch of its life and each development in the story so contrived that it lands with an agonizingly dull thud. Written by David Ashton and Jeff Murphy, it hits just about every saccharine note possible while never once achieving the bittersweet balance it is constantly reaching for. You never wonder what it is that you’re meant to be feeling or where it is all going, though it falls short at every turn. All that it leaves is a sense of grim resignation as you realize this is going to be the film you’re in for the next approximately 90 minutes that ends up feeling like an eternity.
Right out of the gate, as we get several sweeping shots of the beautiful Scottish Highlands, “Glenrothan” begins to stumble. The opener and everything that follows is merely about setting up the story, not making us genuinely feel any earned emotion. As we get bombarded by clunky narration from Cox, who plays distillery owner Sandy, you can feel the strings of the superficial narrative already being pulled.
We learn of how Sandy’s brother Donal (Alan Cumming) left their home behind to go make a go of it in the United States, where he’s been for the past 30 years. But when a crisis upends his life, he decides to return with his daughter (Alexandra Shipp) and granddaughter with what may be ulterior motives. As he explores his hometown, he begins to awkwardly reconnect not just with Sandy, but with his close childhood companion Jess (Shirley Henderson), whom he also hasn’t spoken to for decades. As the family’s painful past starts to come to the surface, both their future and that of the distillery hang in the balance.
All of this is communicated through the most cloying flashbacks imaginable that play more like parodies of themselves than they do actual scenes. Everything is so broad and each line of dialogue so blunt that you feel as though you’re being hit over the head at every turn. Any deeper questions “Glenrothan” tries to raise about the tension between duty to family and personal fulfillment are never grappled with in any meaningful way. Subtlety is not a word it seems to know.
Even when Donal and Sandy literally grapple on the ground after an obligatory betrayal, it’s played more as a patronizing joke on the older brother than it is genuinely funny or revealing. It’s borderline insulting to its characters, with Shipp getting so little to do as the goodhearted daughter that you continually wonder if something was cut.
It’s a shame, as Cox is a great actor. However, not all great actors make for great directors, especially when working with a story as superficial as this. There are plenty of more crowd-pleasing dramas to be made about family, but they need at least some emotional punch behind them. “Glenrothan” has no such heart behind it, proving to be less of a halfhearted swing and more of a sad shrug. All one can say by the time it wraps in an overly neat and forced finale is I love you Brian Cox, but this is not a serious movie.
