Like many of us nowadays, I needed a reason to laugh. My mistake — encouraged by the offbeat bona fides of the British performers Tom Basden and Tim Key — was expecting “The Ballad of Wallis Island” to provide one.
Bereft of chuckles or even a substantial story, this maudlin musical fable never escapes the drag of a lead character with supporting-player energy. From the instant Herb McGwyer (Basden) washes up — quite literally, having tumbled out of a rowboat — on the fictional Wallis Island, it’s clear he’s a drip. A decade earlier, Herb was a big deal in folk music as one half of the popular duo McGwyer Mortimer; now he’s a struggling solo artist who can’t even finance his latest album.
All of which explains his sodden arrival on this depopulated rock, the home of an eccentric lottery winner named Charles (Key), who has offered Herb an astonishing half-million pounds to play a single concert. Herb’s annoyance at the lack of a showbiz welcome — no car, no publicist, no fancy hotel — intensifies when he learns that his host, a lonely widower, will be the sole audience member. And that this McGwyer Mortimer superfan has also persuaded Herb’s former bandmate and erstwhile lover, Nell (Carey Mulligan), to join them, apparently hoping that the two will rekindle their artistic, and perhaps even their romantic alchemy.
For the sake of Nell, who now prefers cooking chutney to composing tunes, viewers should hope otherwise. Petulant and whiny, Herb is such a charmless sourpuss it’s a relief when Nell shows up with a cheery husband, Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen), in tow. Yet rather than mine this awkward ménage for much-needed humor, Basden and Key’s screenplay hustles Michael hastily offscreen to search for puffins. (Lest we be left in suspense, he pops back at the end to confirm he found them.)
A damp, rather depressing dirge of unmemorable tunes, unflattering clothing and unexceptional scenery, “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” directed by James Griffiths and expanded from Basden and Key’s 2007 short film “The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island,” strains to fill its running time. Coaxing mild amusement from Charles’s oddball cluelessness and Herb’s reliance on the island’s lone telephone kiosk — shades of “Local Hero” (1983)— the movie fails to police the boundary between sweet and soppy. Yet there’s a lost quality to Herb’s prickliness, and a neediness in Charles’s devotion to his idol’s music, that now and then make their interactions unexpectedly touching.
Mostly, though, “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” shot in Wales in less than three weeks, wisely places most of its bets on Mulligan. Wrapped in coppery light and homespun outfits, her Nell is warm and wise, going some way toward filling the void where a more substantial story ought to be. When she leaves, all too suddenly, the film has nothing to do except repeat a chorus we have already heard too many times and that was never very catchy to begin with.
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