In two sittings. I've had the soundtrack for ages but never seen the movie. (The ABC used to use Knopfler's Going Home as intro music to something, I think; in any case, it lodged in my brain like The Beatles.) Well it's a quirky, whimsical, earnest attempt to be agreeable, to find the common ground between locals with beautiful scenery and global capital, here represented as various parts of Scotland and a Texas oil company. Corporate head Burt Lancaster is almost unrecognisable until he speaks. I loved his fascination with cosmology, and the Texan drawl of the receptionists was almost just-a-moment Office Space. The boffins were funny. Pete Capaldi chases the mermaid Jenny Seagrove. Peter Riegert is too American everyman for me to remember.
Roger Ebert at the time. He gestures at Bill Forsyth's earlier feature. Janet Maslin.