Barnaby Thompson celebrates the multifaceted life and work of legendary playwright Noël Coward with a perfunctory profile doc.
Releasing a documentary profile on a towering cultural figure to mark 50 years since their death feels perfunctory, and more often than not, yields predictable results. That’s not to say that there haven’t been many a filmmaker whose stylistic innovations have proven this thesis wrong. Alas, Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story offers no such rebuttal.
This documentary gets the job done in terms of giving a potted history on one of the most multifaceted artists of the 20th century, charting career highlights across his wide body of work that spans stage, page, screen, and cabaret, but doesn’t do much else in terms of delving into its fascinating subject’s processes. Director Barnaby Thompson deploys the usual set-up, minus the talking heads: an assortment of grainy archive footage and still photographs that explore both the breadth of Coward’s prodigious career and delve into his private life, particularly his homosexuality.
The narrative relies on Alan Cumming and Rupert Everett: Cumming’s narration repeatedly insisting that Coward’s rags-to-riches trajectory and successes across the pond led him to redefine the image of the “quintessential Englishman,” Everett is the voice of Coward, and he recites reminisces, contemplations and anecdotes from his autobiography. The film crams in as much as possible and ends up entirely bereft of dramatic heft, and it is about as rewarding as scrolling through Coward’s Wikipedia page.
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Published 2 Jun 2023
Noël Coward led quite an extraordinary life.
Very standard documentary fare, but easy enough to sit through.
More suited to an evening television slot than a cinema screen.
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