The Sundance Film Festival competition award winners won’t be announced until next week, and judging is still underway. While The Ballad of Wallis Island is playing out of official competition, the fact remains that, judging by the audience reaction to the film’s premiere on Saturday, it was hard not to leave the premiere feeling like Sundance 2025 just may have found its next audience favorite.
Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden), once half of the iconic folk-rock duo McGwyer and Mortimer, is deeply focused on his solo career and his upcoming album when an unexpected offer arrives: a private gig on a remote island. The request comes from Charles (Tim Key), and when Herb arrives on the island, he learns that he’s not staying in a hotel, but at Charles’ house, and that the intimate venue gig for an audience of “under a hundred people” is 99 short of a hundred, as Charles will be the entire audience. The reclusive two-time lottery winner is obsessed with McGwyer and Mortimer, and Herb is stunned when his former musical partner and ex-lover Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman) arrives, along with her new husband Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen, Leonardo, Famalam) to play the gig with him. The two haven’t seen each other in nearly a decade, and tensions between them resurface quickly — as do other feelings. Caught between nostalgia and discomfort, Herb’s incredulous frustrations with this strange man who has brought them together under false pretenses start to soften, and soon lead Herb to uncover the real reason for Charles’ extravagant gesture — a deeply personal yearning to relive a time indelibly connected to the former duo’s music.
Lead actors and co-writers Key and Basden, half of the four-man comedy troupe Cowards, along with director James Griffiths, have adapted their 2007 short film The One and Only Herb McGwyer Pays Wallis Island, and this is a rare case of a short film that was crying out for expansion. This bittersweet exploration of nostalgia, connection and the healing power of music is riotously and joyously funny, with marvelously written (and frequently improvised) dialogue that ranges from brilliantly inane to stupidly profound. The Ballad of Wallis Island is a beautifully touching film that comes to vibrant life through richly drawn characters, inspired comedy, quirky charm and great music. The film has had an 18-year gestation period, and the creative team’s heartfelt commitment to the story and its themes come through in every frame. What sounds like it may well be a crazy and contrived variation on The Parent Trap with musicians becomes so much more. It’s a deep exploration of loneliness, regret, self discovery and the healing power of music, and it’s a refreshingly sweet, innocent and delightfully nutty comedy that serves as a much-needed antidote to the biting cynicism and in-your-face shock value that forms the basis for too much of the modern approach to humor.
Key and Basden are the soul of the film, and the chemistry in their performances is sublime. Key’s Charles is indefatigably chipper and seemingly incapable of shutting his mouth for even 20 seconds, contrasting with the pretentious and serious Herb in the most amusing ways. Basden also proves to be a phenomenal singer and guitarist, and the songs, which he co-wrote with Key, are simply terrific. Mulligan is one of our finest working actors, and her talent is an immeasurable addition, though audiences coming into the film simply to see the new Carey Mulligan vehicle will find themselves surprised yet anything but disappointed by what they get. Ndifornyen, a great comic in his own right, is stuck in something of a straight man role, but he plays it with such unselfish aplomb that he makes a big impression. Sian Clifford (Fleabag, Young Woman and the Sea) rounds out the ensemble as the local shop owner Amanda, a goodhearted and endlessly friendly woman who is hilariously clueless about everything from music to Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and Clifford brings an endearing earnestness to the role.
The Ballad of Wallis Island was met by a thunderous and overpowering standing ovation when the lights came up at the Eccles Center, and it’s a crowd pleaser that has all the markings of a beloved classic, destined to be embraced as a sentimental favorite by anyone lucky enough to fall under its sweet spell. —Patrick Gibbs
Read more of SLUG’s coverage of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
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