Can a whole film really be all about a simple game of Scrabble? Oh yes, yes it can. This film centres entirely around one game and the lasting consequences of it. Sound boring? Not even slightly. Every moment of this beautiful film is an absolute pleasure. It will make you grab the old battered game off the shelves, dust it down and wise up on your words.
It’s a wordsmith’s dream film. If you’re a language lover or a lexicon lush it’s one for you – it’s all about words – or I suppose more about communication, our struggle with it, how we do it, the method, the means, its subtlety and ultimately its importance.
The always-oh-so-dapper Bill Nighy (Alan – who happens to be a tailor) is a father (actually now a grandfather) in search of his missing son (Michael) who walked out in the middle of a game of Scrabble many years ago. Nighy and his other now grown-up son Peter (Sam Riley) are reunited when they go to identify a body which could be Michael.
They are awkward souls and dismissive of each other but have to rub along together for the sake of the missing Michael. Silence, stutterings and snippets of conversations through shut doors are how they try to reach each other.
Alan is the ninja of the Scrabble world and hustles unsuspecting players with his charm and wit – which he mashes up nicely with killer word score smackdowns. He’s brilliant with words and knows some crazy definitions of things I certainly have never heard of but he is totally lost when it comes to using words to communicate with his son.
The most effective way he finds of reaching out is using a name labeller (usually used to mark items like guitar cases etc), to leave little messages – the most touching is one he leaves for his grandson Jack (Louis Healy) after he stays over with Peter’s family and shares Jack’s bunkbed. Alice Lowe is wonderfully wonderful as Peter’s wife Sue and the scene she has with Jack at the bus stop is hilarious and awkward – and frankly genius.
At the start of the film it’s hard to know when it’s set but I think that’s a clever way of showing that all the characters are living in the present day but somehow stuck or rooted to the time when they lost Michael.
Frank Cottrell-Boyce has written, rather crafted, something compelling and important here and he’s created complex characters which you really care about. Better still is that once Cottrell-Boyce knew he had Nighy onboard he rewrote large chunks just for him – which is marvellous and shows. Carl Hunter directs and his debut is absolutely top-notch as the film is exquisite to watch and beautifully shot.
The title of the film refers to which buttons you should do up on a jacket (from top to bottom). But I’m sometimes sideswiped by a film which is always a joy and means I’ll never forget it. Corny, yep maybe but it is so so SO good that I’m happy to get all corny about it. For the record…Corny: trite, banal, or mawkishly sentimental. And to be absolutely clear – that’s how I’m describing my description of the film – not the film itself. The film itself is utterly mesmerising: capturing one’s complete attention as if by magic.
offbeat words 
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