millions of pounds’ worth of improvements, but here Temple runs with the gag that the Thames Estuary is linked with the Mississippi Delta. Thus we have the Thames Delta – our very own swampland. This is an upper for all because it is a proper film. Even if you’ve never heard of Dr Feelgood, never been to Canvey Island and never worn a shiny suit, you will leave this movie dancing your way to the nearest oil terminal.
Feel-good factor ALL THE FEELGOODS
THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994)
And this, Mr Darabont, is the sort of Stephen King story that we like you working on. Topping endless lists of ‘Best Movie Evs!’ (Dr K wrote a book, made a documentary, and still whinges on endlessly about the ‘tacked-on ending’), The Shawshank Redemption had to make our uppers list. For much of this prison drama you may be wondering why we are prescribing it; as we have observed before, you have to get through a lot of Shawshank before you get any redemption. But there is something so noble about Andy Dufresne and Red (Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman) that even when the baton-wielding, Bible-preaching redneck guards are a-clubbin’ and a-beatin’, we are so warmed by this story of hope that we stay with it. When justice finally rains down on the vile prison warden Norton (Bob Gunton) we are more than ready to whoop and holler.
Red says, ‘You either get busy livin’ or you get busy dyin’,’ and whether you get grumpy at the ending or you just love it as it is, you’ll finish this movie with hope in your heart and the desire to go varnish someone’s boat (not a euphemism).
Feel-good factor
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF RICHARD CURTIS APART FROM THE BOAT THAT ROCKED
If you are walking through town and something lovely happens, that’s Richard Curtis. If your partner says, it’s OK, he forgives you, that’s Richard Curtis. And if as you drive along the A303 you notice a wavy-haired man on his knees proposing to his flaxen-haired girlfriend in the middle of Stonehenge while a boy band mime an Elvis Costello song, that too is Richard Curtis. There is not a single writer, producer or director anywhere who has devoted more time to warm-heartedness than Richard Whalley Anthony Curtis.
This does not mean soppy. This does not mean sugar-coated pap with horrible characters who make you vomit with their nauseating sincerity and po-faced moralising. It just means that he wants to make films about love (yes, actually). Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, About Time, Bridget Jones and even Trash are all movies that will make the world a brighter, less threatening place. Charles gets Carrie and Anna gets William, though Harry messes things up with Karen (careful with that elaborately wrapped necklace).
Feel-good factor
MAMMA MIA! (2008)
My, my, how can we resist you? Is it the best movie in the world? Er, no. Is it the best musical movie in the world? No again. Do any of the cast (Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried, Colin Firth et al) get to deliver career-best performances? We think not. However, this film – made in 2008 when the Greeks still had money (even if, as we learned later, it was all ours) – is so bad it is strangely wonderful.
In summary: on a Greek island, Meryl Streep sings the Abba catalogue like it’s Ibsen, Colin Firth can’t dance, Pierce Brosnan can’t sing and Stellan Skarsgård looks like he’s accidentally wandered in from a completely different movie. Fortunately for us, the songs are bombproof and somehow turn this sow’s ear into a celluloid silk purse. Before you know it you are dancing in the aisles and giving money to tramps. Don’t argue, just surrender to your inner dancing queen. Couldn’t escape if you wanted to.
Feel-good factor
SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS (1941)
If you want an ‘upper’ that will impress passing film students, then start here. Written and directed by Preston Sturges, it tells the story of a successful, if shallow, film director John Sullivan (Joel McCrae) who wants to make a film that means something. He worries that maybe all that froth and silliness (Hey Hey in the Hayloft) won’t count for much when the final tally is being calculated. So, much to the horror of his studio bosses who don’t think such a spoiled lightweight like Sullivan can make an ‘issues’ picture, he sets off dressed as a tramp to ‘get real’ (as they never said in 1941). He finds The Girl (Veronica Lake), and together they set off to understand what poor folk are really like.
He is robbed, beaten up, arrested and sentenced to a labour camp. This, as you might realise, is the downer section of the film. But while in the camp he watches a screening of Walt Disney’s Playful Pluto, a 1934 animation noted for a sequence where Pluto gets stuck on some flypaper. The crowd around Sullivan lap it up and he realises that comedy does, after all, have a purpose. He ditches his planned social epic O Brother, Where Art Thou? (yes, this is where it all started) and promises to stick to comedy. He also gets The Girl. As one of the best satires on the morals of Hollywood, your laughs are righteous, intellectual laughs, and so count double. Your recovery is assured.
Feel-good factor
GROUNDHOG DAY (1993)
The Movie Doctors believe that being what some people call ‘grumpy’ is actually just having standards. You’re no longer a child, you barely remember teenage angst and now, with a certain maturity, you find that standards, everywhere, are slipping. You might have put up with it once – when you knew no better – but not now.
The Danes invented the word (grum means cruel) but it’s an American who leads the field here. Few movie stars do ‘grumpy’ better than Bill Murray. He doesn’t even have to say anything, his face is grumpy. One stare at the camera and you know that he’s just very disappointed. With everything. And he has a lot to be disappointed about. He’s a bored weatherman stuck repeating the same day over and over again; a day that starts with the clock radio playing ‘I Got You Babe’ by Sonny and Cher (a trick repeated hilariously by Dr Mayo one fab Radio 1 morn). He’s in love with Andie MacDowell. She thinks he’s a jerk. But as the groundhog in question – ‘Punxsutawney Phil’ – works his magic, Murray uses his time to do good works and compile a list of MacDowell’s favourite things: poems, ice cream flavours, songs etc. She falls for this stuff completely, he toasts world peace and they ‘retire’ for the evening.
You’ll wake up tomorrow happy with your lot, keen to do good deeds and to avoid rodent-based weather forecasting.
Feel-good factor
DIE HARD (1988)
A man in a vest takes on not just mercenaries with mullets (studios take note: that’s a new franchise right there) but a snarling German anarchist (is there any other kind?). There is no doubt that this action movie is a hoot – a feel-good film full of jokes and memorable one-liners. True, there are a quite few deaths, falling bodies, explosions and scenes of general peril, but we never for one second doubt that Bruce Willis’s moral compass is pointed firmly at Righteous North.
Plus! You can luxuriate in an era of outdated terrorists. This is a time where the threat came from the ‘New
