Gregory's Two Girls

By no means his best film, and by no means comparable to the original (how could it be, the original is a gem) - but still an enjoyable romp. The original hit movie, Gregory's Girl, oozed pubescent romance and bittersweet comedy.

But the long-awaited sequel starts with a dream sex sequence between a male teacher and his 15-year-old pupil in the school's shower block while the headmaster and police batter on the door.

The actor John Gordon Sinclair, who played gawky but charming Gregory in the first film, plays a Gregory who has become a 35-year-old teacher with a passion for schoolgirls. This in itself will be enough for many self-appointed moral watchdogs to condemn the film out-of-hand - they are the same people who tried to claim Lolita was a dog before anyone had even seen it. Yawn, snore... this kind of rent-a-gob puritan "outrage" looks so stupid from countries like Spain or Holland where a fifteeen year-old is several years over the age-of-consent.

This is indeed a funny film, in the politically-incorrect mould pioneered by several recent USA films. That's not to say it's a good film - but it's not bad either, and if you suspend disbelief (hey, you did it for Star Wars Episode 1 :) then it is at least very funny in parts - it's just that those parts don't hang together very well.

And it is shocking too, especially to the frosty English looking for another fix of comforting adolescent nostalgia. Liz Lochhead, the poet and playwright, said of seeing an early cut of Gregory's 2 Girls. "It does shock you. You go, 'Oh my God, what is going on here?' But it's a dream and that makes you laugh. The film is, of course, about that - it's definitely about Gregory's forbidden desires - but I think that's wonderful... The whole film is about him trying to run away from his own desires. It has big sweeping things to say about Scotland. It's an immensely sad and painful film too, but very, very funny. I think the best word to describe the film is sore."

According to one insider, an early script of Gregory's 2 Girls had several sex scenes, including the opening fantasy and a later sequence in which Gregory and the schoolgirl consummate their relationship. He said the script made a point of stressing that the girl was underage. The girl is played by a 16-year-old actress, Carly Mackinnon. Certainly very topical in Jack Straw's New-Labour hang'em!flog'em! 'we-will-rule-for-100-years' Britain, in which such teacher/teen-pupil relationships are daily fodder for Puritanical comment.

Bill Forsyth, the director who also made the original Gregory's Girl 20 years ago, has understandably refused to talk to the media since starting work on the film, which was reportedly fraught with difficulties and personality clashes, and went over budget and over schedule.

In June 1996, Forsyth submitted the script of his Gregory's Girl sequel to the Scottish Film Production Fund (SFPF) with a view to securing lottery funding. The fund turned him down and then 'withheld judgment' on the application. Sources say the film's subject matter was deemed "indecent" and the SFPF allegedly feared 'being crucified' in the tabloid press. This decision was later overruled by the Scottish Arts Council, who held final say on lottery funds, which instructed that Gregory's 2 Girls be awarded 1m, supplementing the 2m invested by Channel 4. Shooting finished in July 1998 and the film premiered at the 1999 Edinburgh Festival in August 1999, then at BAFTA in London in September 1999. For those wondering, the original film, made almost 20 years ago, became a classic for its innocent charm and offbeat sense of humour, and launched the career of Bill Forsyth who went on to direct such low-key classics as Local Hero. It's a pity he didn't try for a more low key piece instead of going for a A Fish Called Wanda style comedy-romp. It's as if the climate of the times caused him to shy away from dealing sensitively and humourously with a love relationship between a teacher and a schoolgirl.

Forsyth returns to the site of the small-scale comedy that made his now-battered name with this somewhat ambitious but messy and incompletely developed chronicle of a teacher who talks about responsibility and activism but practices only stagnation, until the discovery that a local computer company is manufacturing torture devices for Third World dictatorships - and the galvanizing influence of a pupil about whom he has erotic fantasies - bring him to belated life. It's easy enough to see what Forsyth had in mind, but the movie isn't at all well integrated - the Big Ideas float like patches of oil on a stagnant loch. The two girls of the title are both merely wet dreams of different kinds (the movie attempts to forge a parallel between his political/social and his personal maturity - the latter of which is achieved by having actress Kennedy hang around in desperation until he's ready for her "ripe" charms); the movie gets its biggest laugh from the well-timed use of the word "beaver"; the happy ending is a total cheat; even the setting isn't particularly well evoked...on the whole it's not likely to significantly revive Forsyth's reputation.

This film is a travesty, and isn't fit to keep company with the superior original. The plot is an absolute mess, and the film is way too long. Everytime they're struggling, they desperately inject a sentimental reminder from the first film.

"Gregory's Girl" is one of the top 10 British films of all time, this one is awful.

A shift in outlook is neccesary to enjoy modern British films, one that somehow allows them to be seen in their own right and for their own qualities rather than by the criteria that American films are judged. Britfilm has to try hard to be gritty and finds it hard to make it, but at warmth British films can lord it over their otherwise overwhelming competitor.

This film fails not in its content but only in attaching itself to the predeccesor, so allowing it to be all to easily seen as the work of star and director somewhere near the end of their tethers. It's a couple of decades later, Gregory teaching and this time with two girls on his mind. He teaches at his school railing against human rights abuses. When students he's fired up find abuses in their midst he must face whether he's just all talk.

This is a subversive film in that there's not the usual worldly character of any American movie that you expect to do whatever he does, but a naive man boy who may still put everything on the line for principles. Maybe. It's certainly no protest-by-numbers though, being too warm. Where U.S. film may seem realistic because they're urban and gritty, this and other British films of recent years - those that don't try to match America for visceral thrills - are real because British humour reveals truths.

Gregory's Two Girls is a sequel to Bill Forsyth's Brit-comedy Gregory's Girl (1981) starring the same John Gordon Sinclair as Gregory, and this time he is no longer in school as a student lusting after a classmate, but as an English teacher. Gregory still has a predilection for schoolgirls and he's got his eyes on Frances, a 15-year old "Celtic beauty" whom he teaches and develops an unusual bond with. As politically incorrect as this set-up sounds, Sinclair makes his character clumsy, insecure and likable and nothing feels racy, even when it tries.

This is a muffled Scottish drama-comedy that tries to be unusual and quirky, but truly lacks edge or humour of any kind. It also attempts more than one storyline, aside from Gregory battling his schoolgirl infatuation there is some sort of ethical dilemma going on with his best friend Fraser Rowan (Dougray Scott) who appears to be secretly selling interactive torture technology to third world countries. I have absolutely no idea what this storyline is all about or where it came from or who thought it would fit in in a film like this, but facilitates the relationship between Gregory and schoolgirl Frances as they both become involved in this dilemma.

Gregory's Two Girls is the kind of film that is relegated to a bad fate and panned by critics and I see why, but isn't an unwatchable experience -- occasionally nicely done, every now and then smirkworthy and above all, it TRIES. A for effort... but it doesn't really deliver. 5/10