The Incredible Vanishing Girl 2

In which the critic and broadcaster Barry Normal sees
the worst film of the century so far

Back in 2009, at just about this time of year, my so-called 'relationship' with a girl named Jenny was on very thin ice.

We'd met on my birthday, which I share with my good friend Hannah W. I'd been in Cardiff to see a film, and didn't get back to Aberdare until fairly late in the evening. Jenny was in the pub with Hannah when I got there; we started chatting, and found that we had a fair amount in common. She was tall, red-haired, very attractive, intelligent, well-read, a bit kinky (apparently), and totally my type.

She also turned out to be a pathological liar, as I found out over the next nine months or so. After a grand total of four dates and countless lame excuses for standing me up without any warning, I decided right at the start of 2010 that she was history. I was in the pub with an old friend (female) who was also being given the runaround by a guy she was keen on. Jenny texted me while we were discussing our respective situations, asking if I was around. I didn't even waste 10p on texting her back. Instead, I stayed out with my friend, had a few more beers, then went home and wrote New Year, New Start.

I knew Jenny read my blog, because she'd left a couple of comments on previous entries, so I thought I'd extend Paul Simon's idea into the new millennium. As we techies know, there are now at least 55 Ways to Leave Your Lover; the full list includes texting, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Snapchat. Some of the rhymes are a bit forced, but my rewritten version is taking shape slowly.

Amazingly, seven years on from the disastrous original, Discordian Productions have released a sequel – or possibly a reboot, as the studios call them these days. My good friend Barry Normal went to an exclusive preview screening yesterday, and I asked him to write a guest review for this very blog. Here it is:

The Incredible Vanishing Girl 2 is a surreal postmodern rom-com with elements of science fiction, and – like the first outing – somehow manages to deliver much less than the sum of its parts.

It's a strange, complicated, baffling and bizarre rehash of the original story, taking some of the unresolved plot points to new heights of absurdity. The setting remains the same: a small town in the South Wales Valleys, populated by many of the characters who feature in the original. The basic premise is unchanged, too: a single guy in his forties meets a much younger bisexual girl in a pub, and ‒ despite the age difference – they strike up a friendship which could potentially turn into something more serious. The heroine's family background is one of the comic elements on which the story pivots: a broken marriage, adoption, an extended network of stepbrothers and stepsisters – all the standard features of the nuclear family meltdown.

From this straightforward beginning, the 'story' (which seems to have been scribbled on the back of a beermat after a particularly taxing all-day session) degenerates into an unnecessarily complicated knockabout farce.

The heroine meets another girl, and they shack up together. Soon after that, she discovers her girlfriend in bed with a man, and moves out. The hero becomes her sounding board and shoulder to cry on, and everyone expects things to develop between them. They spend a fair bit of time together in the ensuing weeks. He buys her drinks and treats her to a meal now and again, wondering how he's ever going to make his move.

However, just as in the original, disaster strikes. One evening, in the pub for karaoke, she drinks a mysterious cocktail which has an unexpected side-effect: at random intervals, she vanishes from the face of the earth without any prior warning and takes several days to reappear. These inexplicable disappearances are accompanied by a short-range electromagnetic pulse, which fries her phone and renders her totally incommunicado until she can sort out a replacement.

In the meantime, the hero meets another young girl, and they start spending a lot of time together. Many people in the town assume that they are an item, even though she tells him they'll only ever be friends.

By now the heroine has met a guy, and spends all her time on Facebook posting about how loved up she is, and how she can't wait to see him, and all that romantic crap that girls put online to make their 'friends' feel jealous.

But under the surface, all is not well. Her sudden disappearances have added to her mental instability, as nothing in her life is ever straightforward from this point on. She can't decide whether she wants to stay with him, or leave him for someone else. She wants to have a baby with him, but she also wants a new girlfriend. Her friends are starting to lose patience with her, and everyone tells the hero that he's wasting his time with her.

One night, after several beers have lowered her inhibitions, she tells the hero that if she wasn't already involved with someone she'd 'totally fuck him'.

That unexpected revelation comes as a shock to the hero, who has begun to despair of her by now. When he alludes to it a couple of days later, she tells him she was serious, and that she's thinking of leaving her boyfriend. He makes light of it, but secretly wonders if he'll finally get the chance to make a play for her.

After her next disappearance, things have changed again. The heroine tells the hero that they're 'just mates', and that things are back on track with her boyfriend. At the same time, the other girl warns him that the heroine is just using him. (Ironically, the heroine gives him the same warning about the other girl the next time she reappears.)

At this point, I was as confused as the rest of the audience. A fair number of people had already walked out, totally baffled by the haphazard plot, inconsistent and sloppy script, and the huge number of walk-on characters who play no part in the narrative, but merely serve to distract the heroine from her own storyline.

The film ends on a tragi-comic note. Shortly before Christmas, the hero gets a text from the heroine, asking if he'll help her with present shopping. They meet for coffee, plan out the day, and she tells him that it might soon be over with her boyfriend. Apparently she can see the warning signs, and fears that she's going to be dumped over the holidays. Almost in the next breath, she tells him she might be pregnant.

By now, the remaining audience were hooting with derision. This latest twist in an already unbelievable storyline was simply too much to bear.

The two of them go shopping, retreat to the pub to wrap the presents, and then decide to have something to eat. She catches the bus home to drop all her stuff off, and promises to meet him as soon as she's changed and sorted her hair out.

At which point she vanishes for the final time. He texts her in vain for the next couple of hours, realises she's gone for good this time, and goes home.

The closing credits are accompanied by the Beatles' hit 'Hello Goodbye', which seems a strange choice in the circumstances. Personally, I think the producers missed a trick by not using Soft Cell's 'Say Hello Wave Goodbye'.

There's a teasing tag sequence at the very end of the movie, too. About a week into the new year, he receives a text from an unknown number asking if he fancies going to the pub. I really hope that this potential sequel isn't given the green light, for everyone's sake.

If there's been a bigger Xmas turkey released in the last decade, it's passed me by. I'll give it 1 out of 10 for sheer audacity, simply because I can't award it a zero rating.