Skeletons

This likeable but scrappy debut won the Michael Powell award for the Best British Film at Edinburgh last week, which suggests that the competition wasn’t so hot. A leftfield comedy of the mundane with a sci-fi edge, ‘Skeletons’ doesn’t quite know what to do with its bold ideas. It begins with some agreeable, sub-Merchant-and-Gervais banter between Davis (Ed Gaughan) and Bennett (Andrew Buckley), the Little and Large of the world of ‘extraction’ – a process by which this pair investigate homes in middle England to uncover the truth about their past. Together, they work for The Colonel (Jason Isaacs, channelling ‘Dad’s Army’), who reminds them not to get too close to their clients. Comedy segues into stranger territory when a case challenges this code: Jane (Paprika Steen) last saw her husband eight years ago and wants to know what happened to him. Various fantasy strands lead to revelations about several characters, but it’s hard to take this late plea for sincerity seriously.