Dan Levy makes quite an impressive and charming leap from TV to film with his directoral debut Good Grief. The film is on the lighter side but his rich screenplay (he also wrote the film) and a cast overbrewing with chemistry make it one laugh/cry watch that hits all the right feels. Easy to slip into and compelling along the way, Good Grief is simply lovely if a little thin over all.
Levy explores loss and moving through grief in the aptly titled film. perhaps the insights are rather surface but he has crafted a relatable and loveable group of characters to follow. Embodied by this cast, especially Negga who is, as always, just magnetic onscreen, this group feels like the sort you would want to be tagging along with. He lets them be sad and mad and makes jokes and smile through the pain in ways that don't overdo anything. There is a refreshing lack of drama generally, making Good Grief feel realistic and honest.
I also appreciated how the journeys of the characters felt naturalistic and not formulaic. The characters feel familiar in a way that skirts feeling (cliched but not quite) yet they don't fall into the sorts of rote traps one might expect. Instead we just sit with them on a this rather ordinary journey and it is pleasantly real. By the end there isn't anything overly profound and the characters end up where they expect to be but for me this made it feel more truthful even it if might end up a bit more forgettable.
Levy manages to show us another side to himself that is different from David Rose and that is welcome. His story is still optimistic and only slightly messy, but it is as charming and heartfelt as anything we've seen from him before.
Good Grief
Starring: Dan Levy, Ruth Negga, Himesh Patel, Luke Evans, Celia Imrie, Arnaud Valois, David Bradley, Emma Corrin
Writer/Director: Dan Levy
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