The Phantom of the Open

“The Phantom of the Open” belongs to a very particular brand of British comedy: twee, true tales of plucky underdogs accomplishing outrageous acts against the odds. Think “Calendar Girls,” “Eddie the Eagle,” or “Military Wives.” The humorless naysayers of society doubt them and mock them to mask their own insecurities, but still, these true believers trudge on toward their unlikely destiny. The tone is usually dryly cheeky, and maybe even a bit naughty, but ultimately these films give in to their easiest and most crowd-pleasing instincts before dissolving in a pile of sentimental goo.

This is that, but with golf.

Mark Rylance dons a colorful argyle vest and jaunty red bucket hat to play Maurice Flitcroft, who infamously shot the worst round in British Open history in 1976. You see, he didn’t belong there. He was a crane operator at a shipyard in working-class Barrow-in-Furness. He faked his way into the prestigious tournament by fudging the paperwork, albeit in good-natured fashion. His sweetly adoring wife, Jean (Sally Hawkins), even helped him with this task, benignly making up answers to questions about his handicap and such. He didn’t know it was wrong, the film suggests. He just wanted to play golf—something he’d never actually done in his life. And he became a celebrated figure in the process.

But director Craig Roberts—working from a script by Simon Farnaby, based on Farnaby and Scott Murray’s biography of Flitcroft—never really gets to the heart of Flitcroft’s pursuit. Why does golf, of all activities, become his sudden obsession? We see him witness Tom Watson winning the Open on television in 1975. But what was it about this victory in this sport that was so transfixing? That crucial piece to understanding him feels missing; without this nugget of character development, “The Phantom of the Open” is just an airy, formulaic lark, with an especially mannered Rylance performance at the center. His thick accent does much of the acting for him, with a healthy sprinkling of quirks and tics. He’s just super sunny and adorable in every circumstance. Could Flitcroft really have been so irrepressibly optimistic? A suspension of disbelief in his childlike innocence only goes so far.

There’s even less to Hawkins’ character. Aside from a few tender moments between her and Rylance, she’s frustratingly stuck functioning as the doting, supportive wife, and not much else. The fact that she knows even less about golf is played for simple laughs. Meanwhile, Rhys Ifans is singularly smug and villainous as the head of the British Open who’s constantly chasing Flitcroft out; he’s the Wile E. Coyote to Rylance’s Roadrunner.

Flitcroft’s story was wild, but there’s a much crazier movie in here that “The Phantom of the Open” hints at but never fully embraces. Roberts dabbles in magical realism, such as when Flitcroft imagines the Earth is a golf ball he’s orbiting. He also tries to jazz up the story with muscular filmmaking techniques like whip pans and bold needle drops, which feels like he’s doing Craig Gillespie doing Paul Thomas Anderson doing Martin Scorsese. (Some of them are distractingly anachronistic, such as when Flitcroft and his buddy/caddy steal a golf cart and try to escape a tournament they’ve sneaked into with Christopher Cross’ “Ride Like the Wind” blaring in the background. This happens in 1978; the song wouldn’t come out until two years later. Nitpicky? Maybe a little, but in theory, they’re trying to invoke a specific time period.)