690. Gregory’s Girl (1981)

Starring: John Gordon Sinclair, Dee Hepburn, Jake D’Arcy

Director: Bill Forsyth

Running Time: 92 mins

Gregory’s Girl is a British film about a awkward Scottish teenager who falls in love with a girl who takes up a place on the football team, however he must work hard to be with her.

This is a great coming-of-age story, with just as much drama as comedy in it to make it a thoroughly interesting watch. However, you’ve also got the very awkward atmosphere to it all, largely exaggerated by the main character, and that really adds to the more fun aspect of the story, meaning that this film is a very well-rounded, entertaining watch.

One of the main issues with coming-of-age films, especially love-related ones, is that they can be overly romanticised, and that turns it into a totally fictional and unrelatable story, however in this film, the characters, the settings and absolutely everything else is perfectly down to earth.

That means that you get a fantastic story that absolutely anyone, teenagers, adults, and even pre-teenagers, can relate to and enjoy very deeply, which I found hugely satisfying and refreshing to see.

Meanwhile, you’ve got the brilliantly awkward comedy. Being a very British film, it’s low on the Richter scale in terms of the absolutely huge laughs that you get from it, but it’s still hugely entertaining, due to our main character’s awkwardness and idiocy when it comes to his love interest, adding a lot of farce to the whole thing.

I absolutely loved all of the performances in this film too. Gregory, played by John Gordon Sinclair, fitted perfectly into the down to earth and real story, while his love interest, Dorothy, played by Dee Hepburn was a convincingly amiable and lovely character, making the atmosphere of this relationship, although largely frustrating, quite pleasant.

However, the one performance that I was hugely impressed by, even though it was incredibly small, was that of Gregory’s 10-year-old sister, Madeline, played by Allison Forster. Not only did she take on that reversed role of being the voice of reason and the insight into relationships, despite only being 10 years old, but her comedic delivery and overall demeanour was both hilarious and pleasant to watch, making her really stand out in a film where she was definitely not the main character, but still instrumental to the story.

Overall, then, this gets a 7.5, because it was a very funny, pleasant and relatable story that was so easy to enjoy.