The teen coming-of-age comedy-drama has been pretty absent from cinemas in recent years, but George Jacques brings it back with a new setting. The result is heartfelt and elevated by strong performances, even if it serves as more of an engaging couple of hours than something with lasting impact.

We meet 17-year-old Ivy (Bella Ramsey), 10 months in remission from cancer but struggling with the isolation that came from it. Her concerned but cheerfully supportive parents (in the vein of Easy A but with the acerbic wit swapped for cringey jokes), played by Jessica Gunning and James Norton, decide to send her off to what she calls ‘chemo camp’, to spend time with others who have had similar experiences to her. Immensely reluctant, Ivy eventually caves and despite a disruptive start, she finds herself drawn into a pre-established group of colourful characters, forming strong friendships and falling for one member in particular.

This is a British, naturalistic take on the genre but with a heavy dose of optimism. The film is frequently funny and heartwarming – you’d be hard pressed to not have a smile on your face at points. It allows its teenagers to be teenagers, and whilst its focus on their escapist summer does feel like it sprinkles a dusting of sugar across the reality, it doesn’t trivialise the serious subject matter beneath it all. At times, the film offers its audience the same kind the summery escape as its characters, at others, the severity of what the characters have been through comes to the fore, rarely in a way that feels forced. There are also moments of genuine emotion that break through, thanks in large part to Ramsay’s performance.

The film is populated with teen-movie tropes (centring on love, friendship and identity), but their context offers a fresh veneer. You root for the characters, and their past experiences add a particular sense of urgency to the coming-of-age aspects. However, in its hurry to ensure Ivy experiences the utmost in the month-long camp, relationships within the film develop so quickly that it begins to feel almost like a fantasy, making it hard to fully invest in them when they don’t feel entirely grounded. The film’s timestamps of the weeks of camp serve to unintentionally emphasise this. The heart that clearly went into the film and the likeability of the characters makes it hard to truly begrudge these flights of fancy, but it does weaken the emotional impact and leave the film feeling a little shallower than it intends to be.

Ramsay leads with a beautifully judged performance, capturing the full spectrum of Ivy’s experience from the more begrudging and rebellious girl who arrives at camp to a more openly hopeful figure as her walls come down and she makes real connections. She doesn’t allow the edges to be softened too much, keeping the core of the character and grounding some tough emotional scenes. Her group of friends are brought to life by enthusiastic performances, filling in what is sketched out in the script, each with a distinct personality (albeit ones that could be a little too easy to categorise as opposed to being fully rounded). Neil Patrick Harris, as the camp leader, is handed some of the more sobering scenes opposite Ramsay, bringing reminders of the reality outside camp. Josie Walker is excellent in a Nurse Ratchet-adjacent role, who may or may not have a softer spot beneath. There is also an unexpected celebrity cameo – I’m unsure how this was meant to land – as well as a fairly random Tiktokker shot. All good to draw attention to the reality behind the film (it opens, at least in the UK, with a brief video of Jacques talking about the Teenage Cancer Trust).

Whilst the general arc of the film follows what you would expect, Jacques manages to find ways to make it feel less predictable and more authentic. By the time the film reaches its climax, an unexpected plot twist occurs that will likely divide audiences. On the one hand it allows the expected to unfold in an unexpected way, on the other the whiplash is so disorientating that it pulls you out of the film, with only Ramsey’s performance keeping you tethered. It is commendable to avoid the overly-trodden route but the rug pull doesn’t entirely land.

A fresh addition to a missed genre, Sunny Dancer is an enjoyable film, even if it skirts the surface too much to have a lasting impact.