Writer/director
Bill Forsyth's follow-up to his best film,
Local Hero, is another comic exploration of a man undergoing a personal crisis. In
Local Hero, the American played by
Peter Riegert finds himself enchanted by the people and ambience of a Scottish village he has been dispatched to purchase for an oil company. In Comfort and Joy, Alan (
Bill Paterson) is a Glasgow radio disc jockey whose air name is the chirpy Dickey Bird. After Maddy, his girlfriend (Eleanor David), walks out on him at Christmas, he's spurred to re-evaluate his life. Looking for more meaningful work than spinning pop tunes and offering inane chatter to his geriatric listeners, Alan decides to make a radio documentary. He chances upon a local rivalry between two ice cream companies, who are sabotaging each other's trucks in an effort to monopolize the market. Attracted to Charlotte (C.P. Grogan), the daughter of one of the company owners, Alan finds himself playing peacemaker rather than documentarian. That this cold war takes place in the dead of a bitter Scottish winter is only one of Forsyth's many sly touches. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide