Bonnie & Clive review – cheerfully ridiculous Covid road trip

Bonnie has two days to get from south London to her grandparents’ house in Cornwall before lockdown in this super low budget British comedy

N o offence to any Clives reading, but the intentionally naff title of this film does not inspire confidence – and turns out to be indicative of the cheerful ridiculousness of this super low budget British comedy. It is about a trio of twentysomethings on a road trip to Cornwall at the start of one of the Covid lockdowns; from the outtakes and behind the scenes clips that run over the end credits, everyone involved clearly had a blast making it. But that enjoyment doesn’t spill on to the screen – and the whimsical songs accompanied by a ukulele wear thin in less than half a minute.

Eleanor May Blackburn is Bonnie, who has two days to get to her grandparents’ house in Cornwall from south London before lockdown. Just as she is about to hit the road, Bonnie meets homeless busker Clive (Michael Kodi Farrow) and offers to buy him a kebab. But when her credit card is declined at the till, she rushes out without paying, leaving Clive to perform a stickup with his ukulele case to the bemusement of the kebab shop owner.

The pair take off in a retro 1990s camper van, picking up hitchhiker Wilco (James Jip), a social anthropology student who has run away from university, unable to hack lockdown. There are plenty of shots filmed out of the window as they drive westward, and scenic moments at tourist sites including Stonehenge and Dartmoor, and another involving the trio pushing a dead body in a wheelchair around the Eden Project. It is persistently, annoyingly quirky, and some of the performances have that over-acted, exaggerated style familar from kids’ TV.