The Loneliest Boy in the World

 The Loneliest Boy in the World quickly lives down to its title as Oliver, the titular boy (Max Hardwood) gets an ultimatum handed to him by two social workers - either he finds a friend in a week, or he is institutionalized. 

 A gentle storm of quirk, 80's nostalgia, magical realism and endless clichés with nothing at its center, the film then sprawls out from there with aplomb but not much else. I keep wanting to describe the movie as a wet fart, but that would imply there's some substance to it; this is more a meek, odorless fart that squeaks by with a barely audible whimper, maybe causing a chuckle or two. To give you an idea of how hollow it is, it lovingly references ALF, and incorporates as many shitty sitcom/teen movie elements as it can into its, for the lack of a better word, narrative.

 Oliver lives alone in his mother's immaculately kept house (she died in a very cheesy-looking incident with a sharp garden gnome) and is the sort of quiet, sweet-natured kid who, if we judge him by his actions, absolutely deserves to be placed in a straightjacket; a 'funny' (read: very forced) misunderstanding with the social workers has him going to the local cemetery, first to dig up a friend (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) and then a family (Susan Wokoma, Ben Miller and Zenobia Williams). Yes, there are a couple of Weekend at Bernie's jokes.

 Things get a tiny bit complicated when his new housemates return to life behaving like a loving zombie  family and friend surrogates, but this movie has no interest in going all-out farce. So they're just... background noise, good for a couple of jokes and to help Oliver learn some ill-defined life lessons. They help navigate his interactions with the social workers, a couple dates with a crush (Talulah Haddon, barely there as an object of affection) and a confrontation with bunch of zero-dimensional bullies (led by, ugh, a social media star - Jacob Sartorius; He does as well as you could with a non-existent role).

 Luckily the surfaces are all right. Director Martin Owen (who wasted a perfectly good Scott Adkins in the similarly hollow and nostalgia-driven The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud) has a good eye for production design and keeps things moving nicely, often adding little stylistic flourishes to do so.

 The cast is mostly likeable, although their British-ness is a bit at odds with the material. The tone's unremittingly sweet-natured, and the soundtrack pretty good: 80's bangers both obvious and not, and a pretty cool-sounding original synth-heavy score by The Invisible Men.

 It might seem like I hated this, based on everything I've written above, but that's not really the case; I just feel like it wasted my time.

 The script, by Piers Ashworth is based on a story co-written by Emilio Estevez and has been in development hell... well, since the eighties, when Corey Feldman was attached to star. That helps explains why it's such an absolute mess. This final incarnation does keep a steady stream of events coming, even if they don't really add up to anything, and there are a couple of quietly funny jokes among all the duds. It's just that it doesn't have anything to say, or an interesting way of saying nothing.

 Maybe there was a reason, once, why this was kept in undeath for almost four decades, and why it's now been sent shuffling out into the world in such a state... but whatever it was, it's long gone.