Submarine

Richard Ayoade's stylistic adaptation of Joe Dunthorne's titular coming-of-age novel serves up an affected tale centered on one of those ultra-precocious adolescents one rarely if ever encounters outside of memoirs and sitcoms. Fifteen-year-old Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), who lives in a Welsh seaside town, has two great ambitions. One is to save his parents' (Noah Taylor, Sally Hawkins) marriage, which is threatened by a combination of his father's sheer dullness and the reappearance of his mother's old flame, a scruffy self-help guru (Paddy Considine) who has moved in next door. The other, of course, is to have sex, which Oliver hopes to achieve by winning over sharp-tongued classmate Jordana (Yasmin Paige). Submarine follows Oliver's travails and mini-triumphs as he pursues his goals in comical fashion while describing his efforts in a stream of insufferably cute narration. Although Ayoade presents Oliver's odyssey with a flamboyant visual sense—composing ostentatiously elaborate sequences—the film's overriding tone of smug self-consciousness sometimes makes this feel like a triumph of style over substance. Still, this should be considered a strong optional purchase. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include deleted and extended scenes (13 min.), a “making-of” featurette (11 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a decent extras package for an uneven film.] (F. Swietek)