Fearful flyers are the focus of comedy ‘Northern Comfort’ - review

When I saw Northern Comfort, the new British-Icelandic comedy about people who are afraid to fly that opens throughout Israeli theaters on November 30, it occurred to me that there have been few movies about phobias. Like all phobias, fear of flying is by definition an irrational fear – people who have it are often told that it is more common to die in a car crash than a plane crash as if that is supposed to be comforting – which means that many of those who suffer from it are embarrassed about it, making it a ripe subject for comedy.

Northern Comfort, which combines a fear-of-flying comedy with a trope about people getting stuck in an out-of-the-way place, is gentle entertainment filled with good performances by familiar faces. If it’s less than earth-shaking, maybe that’s the point: It’s the cinematic equivalent of mashed potatoes. 

Northern Comfort was directed by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson of Iceland who has made quite a few comedies, something that is not true of most Icelandic directors whose films are exported. It focuses on a group of phobic people in London who take a special course to prepare them to take flights that they need or want to take. I actually once had an experience helping a colleague with this phobia get psychological treatment so she could go to a Glenn Miller fans’ convention in Iowa with her husband of 40 years, but unfortunately, the characters in the movie have stories that are a little more generic. 

Lydia Leonard, who currently appears on The Crown as Cherie Blair, plays Sarah, a delicate woman who is in her element in her work as a property developer, where she is quite comfortable telling men what to do. But she is so ashamed of her flying phobia that she hasn’t told her seemingly very understanding boyfriend about it, and goes to great lengths to hide it, even pretending to him that she jets around the world when she doesn’t. 

So that she can take a vacation with him and his daughter, she has joined the Fearless Flyers course, which teaches its participants behavioral techniques to help them overcome their fears and takes them on a simulated flight and eventually a real one. Her boyfriend’s ex-wife stresses her out further by telling her how bratty and demanding her daughter will be on the trip, even though the girl seems quite angelic. 

It's always fun to see Timothy Spall

It’s always fun to see Timothy Spall, one of England’s best character actors, who has appeared in such movies as A Room with a View, Vanilla Sky, Secrets & Lies, Mr. Turner, and the Harry Potter franchise. In Northern Comfort, he plays a special forces veteran who fought in the Falkland Islands War and has since become a successful novelist. He keeps winning awards but has to skip the prize ceremonies because of his flying phobia, which is what motivates him to take the course. 

Alfons (Sverrir Gudnason) is a hi-tech guy trying to launch an app he has designed, and he is pushed into the course by his travel influencer girlfriend, Coco (Ella Rumpf), who wants him to see the world with her, partly so that he can take pictures of her. Charles (Simon Manyonda) is the well-meaning but easily frazzled leader of the course. 

Once they all get on their first real flight to Iceland, they experience the kind of real turbulence that would unsettle the hardiest of flyers. Predictably, some of them blurt out their true feelings when they are sure they are about to die. 

When they make it to Iceland, they get stuck there and must stay at an incredibly upscale resort/spa. There, they get into various comic situations, one of the funniest of which involves the app designer and a tech mogul he happens to meet there. 

This moderately entertaining comedy may be what some of us need right now. Some will identify with the characters, while others will just enjoy the gorgeous Icelandic scenery. 

By the way, the woman I worked with ended up flying to the Glenn Miller convention and having the time of her life; and later went to Florida, so her story had as happy an ending as Northern Comfort does.