You know when you hear a song and it transports you back to an era or a memory or a moment? It’s this involuntary mental reflex that can be marvelous, painful, or some combination of the two; all intensified by the emotion of the music that triggers it. This familiar phenomenon provides the backbeat for The Ballad of Wallis Island, a comedy that envelops you in its charm while plucking a serenade on your heartstrings. The film itself is an evocation of a memory for writers/stars Tim Key & Tom Basden and director James Griffiths––a feature shot in eighteen days based on a short film they made eighteen years ago.
Basden plays jaded musician Herb McGwyer, who arrives for a private gig by dinghy on the humbly majestic Welsh coast. Greeting him on the shore is Charles, the lonely eccentric (played delightfully by Key) who hired him to perform on the remote Wallis Island. Herb knows little about the show other than the fact that it’s going to be an acoustic performance. He doesn’t know that the island has no hotels and that Charles will be hosting at his own home. He doesn’t know that the show will be for an audience of one: Charles. And he doesn’t know that Charles also hired Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan), the other half of his old folk duo McGwyer Mortimer and former romantic partner, from whom he has been estranged for about a decade.
Key, blessed with a face that could sell comedy in the silent era, is the film’s comedic propeller. Charles is a loquacious super-fan who sets out on runs of unclever streams of consciousness that widen to rivers, much to Herb’s chagrin. When Herb falls in the water upon his arrival, Charles refers to him as “Dame Judi Drenched.” At one point, he says of a picturesque sunset: “to paraphrase The Beatles, there goes the sun.” In another scene, Nell gifts Charles a small jar and he responds “Houston, we have chutney, and it’s not a problem,” and it was so unexpected that it took the wind out of me. They’re not really dad jokes as much as they are the kinds of raw half-jokes made off-the-cuff to fill the silence like at a dinner party where no one has anything left to say. The performance is a finely-tuned version of Key’s character Sidekick Simon, a longtime partner of British comedic treasure Alan Partridge.
Wallis Island’s comedy is born from well-constructed characters, fruitful situations, and strong performances. The remote island location affords an abundance of comedic opportunities such as the difficulty of getting goods and out-of-touch residents. Charles is able to pay both Herb and Nell several hundred thousand dollars for the gig because he won the lottery…twice. It’s endearing that Wallis Island’s comedy comes from genuine and thoughtful creativity, an unfortunate rarity these days.
Another folly Wallis Island avoids is the nondescript, or worse, uninteresting location. Griffiths takes advantage of the island’s wealth of natural glory. The verdant hillsides and pristine beach imbue each scene with splendor that elevates everything from walk-and-talks to the moments of dramatic pathos.
The unexpected reunion, forces Herb to confront his unreconciled split from Nell as well as the path of artistic compromise he’s taken since. Nell has married and created a new life for herself. Mulligan, with her warm presence and world-weary grace, is effortlessly convincing as a farmer’s market vendor in Portland who was one-half of a popular folk duo in another life.
The soft melodies of the McGwyer Mortimer catalog wafts throughout our time on Wallis Island. The songs, all written by Basden, pass for the folk-rock trend around 2010 (perhaps best embodied by Mumford & Sons, led by Mulligan’s real-life husband Marcus Mumford). The songs elicit a glorious but painful past for both Herb and Charles, who need each other to attain closure.
The Ballad of Wallis Island doesn’t deliver any revelatory perspective on the idea of moving on, nor is it trying to. It’s a crowd-pleasing adult comedy that manages to be sentimental without being cloying, sweet without being saccharine. Let’s keep these coming, please.
The Ballad of Wallis Island premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and opens on March 28.