Papadopoulos & Sons

Dir: Marcus Markou

2012

**

I found Marcus Markou's rather lethargic comedy-drama Papadopoulos & Sons to be a bitter disappointment if I'm being honest. Filmed just down the road to where I was living at the time, I had high hopes that this was the sort of film that independent cinema in Britain could be proud of. It's been congratulated as being a relaxed and subtle approach to retelling Shakespeare's King Lear in a contemporary setting of a fish and chip shop but I think the critics were finding high-points that just really aren't there. Subtle is an understatement. I think I would have preferred a film were the characters were loud and brash as the Greeks are often stereotypically portrayed. Good for Markou in avoiding the sort of clichés you'd expect from such a film but as a viewer I felt I was given absolutely no insensitive to invest any emotion to the characters or their situation and that's saying something as I have been known to cry during insurance infomercials. There is very little to about the performances as there is very little to them, Georges Corraface's Uncle Spiros is by far the most likable and thus most watchable character but isn't really given the screen time or story he deserved. Any applaudable realism that Stephen Dillane can be congratulated for is undone by the cartoonish and overplayed performance of the rest of the cast. The intended message never really convinces, the final scene delivering the killer blow that the whole story was in fact a huge waste of time after all.