The Ballad of Wallis Island: bittersweet British comedy is a 'delight'

I did not have high expectations for "The Ballad of Wallis Island", said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times. Developed from a 2007 short film by its co-stars, poet-comedian Tim Key and his writing partner Tom Basden, it is "a British comedy low in budget and high in whimsy" – a formula that "I for one have learnt to dread". Yet the film turns out to be a "delight".

Key plays Charles, a verbose, socially awkward widower who has won the Lottery and used the proceeds to buy a crumbling house on an island somewhere off the coast of Britain. Living in near-total isolation, he invites his favourite musician – washed-up mid-2000s folk star Herb McGwyer (Basden) – to come to the island to perform for him in its grounds. Yet when the latter arrives, he proves to be "a sour egomaniac" with little patience for Charles's fanboy enthusiasm and constant, excruciating punning. Herb is inclined to flee, but badly needs his promised £500,000 fee.

In booking Herb, Charles omitted to mention a crucial detail, said Wendy Ide in The Observer: he has arranged for him to play alongside his former bandmate and lover Nell (Carey Mulligan), who is now happily married and living in America. Herb has never got over Nell, so the stage is set for an "awkward reunion".

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Mulligan is terrific in the role, said Francesca Steele in Sight and Sound: her real-life celebrity helps the audience to "see Nell the way Herb sees her – a grander, greater thing than him". The duets between the two, when they come, work "wonderfully", and it's lovely to watch the developing bond between the needy Charles and the chippy Herb. This is "simple" but effective filmmaking – "an exceedingly British comedy that steers just clear of mawkish".