Bella Ramsey in Uneven Teen Cancer Dramedy

Bella Ramsey takes a break from killing zombies and avenging father figures, their usual pastimes in series The Last of Us, to fool around and fall in love in Sunny Dancer, a decidedly uneven but fitfully charming, YA-skewed British comedy-drama.

Cast once again as a stroppy, hyper-intelligent teen recovering from trauma, Ramsey plays Ivy, a 17-year-old whose parents (Jessica Gunning and James Norton) insist she goes to a summer camp catering specifically to teen cancer survivors like herself.

After the initial sulks and sarcasm subside, bonds are forged, virginities are mislaid, someone dies and many, many montages ensue to assorted bangers. While the bits of the script that were obviously drafted in advance are kind of cringe thanks to high doses of emotional glucose, the easily spotted interludes where the young cast, all of them fast-ascending talents, were allowed to let rip, cut loose and improvise their pretty little hearts out cut the sweetness and create needed teenage texture.

British viewers in particular will struggle with the picture’s main credibility problem: the fact that weeks-long “summer camps” are not a thing at all in the U.K. Indeed, they are considered one of those inexplicable phenomena only North Americans like, along with American football, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and widespread gun ownership.

Writer-director George Jaques (better known as an actor in The Serpent Queen and other TV shows, although this marks his second feature after Black Dog) tries to make the summer camp set-up more plausible by making it the brain child of Yankee camp director Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris), who has his own reasons for wanting to give kids recovering from cancer a chance to run around and have fun. Although why Patrick decided to establish his camp in Scotland (where the film was shot and partly financed) is somewhat baffling given that, for all the country’s beauty, it usually rains nine days out of 10, even in the summer.

Cynical, socially isolated Ivy, who has been in recovery from leukemia for four years now, only agrees to go as a favor to her salty-tongued parents Bob and Karen, who breezily confess they want the house to themselves so they can have hot monkey sex. Gunning’s superb comic timing, familiar from her award-winning turn in Baby Reindeer, and way with a cuss word lights up the first 10 minutes of this, especially when she announces in the car parking lot that if any of the kids “fuck with my daughter, cancer will be the least of your worries.” It’s a shame her character practically disappears for the rest of the film, barring a phone call or two and the last scene.

Despite having her arms almost permanently crossed and a scowl on her face, Ivy eventually starts to warm up, especially to her cheerful, horny-as-a-chihuahua cabin-mate Ella (Ruby Stokes, recently seen in Bridgerton and The Burning Girls). Ella has the hots for camp counsellor Tristan (Louis Gaunt) and hopes that he will relieve her of her virginity when she turns 18 in a few weeks, a quite icky plot point that, however believable given the desires of teenage girls, really doesn’t play well these days in a post-Epstein-file media environment. Ivy, on the other hand, slowly starts to have the feels for dreamy-eyed local boy Jake (Daniel Quinn-Toye, one the film’s very few Scottish actors).  

The rest of the gang is comprised of less well-drawn characters, although the cast valiantly fill in the personality blanks with back chat and body language. There’s emo kid Ralph (Earl Cave, The Chronology of Water, likable but showing the wear of every one of the 25 years he’s put on the clock); woo-woo tarot card reader Maisie (Jasmine Elcock); and shy but sincere Archie (Conrad Khan), who turns out to have the hots for Ella. As a sextet, the youngsters have strong, lively chemistry that just about carries the movie through the longueurs and lousy melodrama, especially when the final act rolls round.

Este Haim of the sister-act Haim contributes a pleasant, indie-inflected score that doesn’t detract from the action but is not hugely memorable either, while the rest of the tech credits are polished and serviceable.