Wah-Wah review

Everything you could ever want to know about Richard E Grant's childhood in colonial Swaziland is revealed in his autobiographical directorial debut, a kind of White Mischief without the murder but with just as much bad behaviour among the ex-pat upper classes. Grant's alter-ego is Ralph - played by About A Boy's Nicholas Hoult - whose take on the world is coloured by his alcoholic dad (Gabriel Byrne), philandering mum (Miranda Richardson) and brassy American stepmother (Emily Watson). Isolated incidents - an illicit screening of A Clockwork Orange, an am-dram staging of Camelot - suggest the influences that shaped The Man Who Would Be Withnail. And while the setting makes this something of a curate's egg, it's polished and sincere enough to ensure Grant's first time behind the camera won't be his last.