Mother’s Pride (dir. Nick Moorcroft)

by Jack Martin | Mar 8, 2026

Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 93 mins

UK Distributor: Entertainment Film Distributors

UK Release Date: 6 March 2026

WHO’S IN MOTHER’S PRIDE?

Jonno Davies, Martin Clunes, James Buckley, Gabriella Wilde, Mark Addy, Lana Moorcroft, Luke Treadaway, Miles Jupp, Lola-Rose Maxwell, Josie Lawrence, Karl Collins, Emily Lloyd-Saini

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Nick Moorcroft (director, writer), Meg Leonard (writer), James Spring (producer), Toby Moore (cinematographer), Johnny Daukes (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A struggling community pub finds success after brewing its own beer…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON MOTHER’S PRIDE?

Quality of their work aside, you have to hand it to filmmaking duo Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft for knowing their audience. Their success with films like Fisherman’s Friends, Finding Your Feet and Blithe Spirit has shown that there is a strong appetite among very specific British crowds for inoffensively formulaic crowd-pleasers, ones that deliver exactly what they advertise before departing without leaving any long-term impact. Add Mother’s Pride to that list, for like the others it is straightforward, frothy and twee with enough old-fashioned British mentality that would make any Reform politician or voter orgasm at the mere sight of it.

Now, nobody is saying that movies like Mother’s Pride don’t have a place in the wider film circle, for the financial success of Fisherman’s Friends says otherwise. But do they really have to be so, well, naff?

That’s really the vibe you’ll get from this movie, as you may have done from Leonard and Moorcroft’s other works, because while there’s no doubt that the filmmakers (with Moorcroft in the director’s chair) had good intentions their execution lacks the kind of energy and sophistication needed to give it some kind of legitimate likeability. As is, it’s just another movie that’s best suited for those sat on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon with a cup of tea in one hand and a Custard Cream in the other. Make of that what you will.

The film is largely set in a quiet Somerset village where widower Mick (Martin Clunes) and his son Jake (James Buckley) run a community pub called The Drovers Arms, which much like its beers is paling significantly to the more popular and prestigious pub just across the way, run by local posho Pritchard (Harry Treadaway). The arrival of Cal (Jonno Davies), Mick’s other son who’s now a washed-up musician, does little to liven the spirits as Mick wants nothing to do with him after he missed his mother’s funeral, while Jake is preoccupied with looking after the pub’s dwindling finances and his troubled young daughter Romy (Lana Moorcroft, the offspring of partners Leonard and Moorcroft). In a bid to save the pub from going under when beer supplies run low, Cal decides to bust out the old family micro-brewery kit and develop his own ale, eventually settling on a working formula that brings the struggling publicans and their local community to the national beer championships in London.

You don’t have to be a screenwriting genius to figure out where it’s all headed, but that’s all part of Leonard and Moorcroft’s brand. They thrive on projects that stick to a particular well-worn formula without much deviation (if any at all), and Mother’s Pride is no different as it follows the exact structure of your classic underdog story almost to a tee, the only difference here being that people get absolutely hammered on their own product from time to time. Not to encourage rampant alcoholism, but the movie could honestly have used a bit more of that drunken bliss because they’re the only parts of the movie that actually feel alive, with everything else from the direction to the performances feeling weirdly low-energy, like the film itself is working through a massive hangover and has no interest in doing anything other than sleeping it all off.

Moorcroft’s lethargic direction turns actors who are otherwise pretty good into near-lifeless caricatures. Clunes is frightfully dull as the emotionally distant wet blanket who even in the film’s more tender scenes sounds as though he’s utterly bored by the material (which is saying something because he gives a far livelier performance in Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”, which is based on material that’s at least a century old), while Mark Addy is left to mostly just prat about as the town’s resident drunkard. Some actors are saddled with roles that to dub one-dimensional would be insulting to the concept of dimensions, especially Treadaway who’s playing a villain so cartoonishly evil it’s a wonder why they didn’t just slap a big curly moustache on his smug face and call it a day, with only Buckley emerging with his dignity intact as a more burnt-out character than he usually is seen playing, though even he has so much going for him in terms of overall investment.

If the filmmaking and acting isn’t enough to draw people in, then what made Leonard and Moorcroft think that their script could? It is riddled with basic characterisation, lame humour that feels manufactured to appease certain demographics among British audiences, and stakes so low that you question why Treadaway’s villain is even so concerned with his rivals since, win or lose, they’ll make almost no mark on his success or his affluent lifestyle. Everything is telegraphed, nothing is unpredictable, it holds your hand all the way through whenever it brings up certain topics – at least one character is revealed to have ADHD early on, and later on a main character admits to having low mental health and even suicidal thoughts, neither of which are ever brought up or mentioned ever again – and most of all, it comes off as pandering toward certain age groups, particularly the elder crowd who remain nostalgic for a Britain that is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the modern age.

But maybe that’s more than enough for most audiences. Again, Fisherman’s Friends was such a big hit and it too featured many of the same faults, so it stands to reason that Mother’s Pride will similarly find its feet. However, if they’re going to keep making more movies like this, could they at least be a bit more entertaining and less lifelessly cloying?

SO, TO SUM UP…

Mother’s Pride is a well-meaning but ultimately rather naff British crowd-pleaser that, much like the other films of filmmaking duo Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft, opts for an entirely predictable formula which is strangely low-energy in its somewhat pandering execution.