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Richard E Grant’s autobiographical film is set in Mbabane, Swaziland, around the time of the demise of British colonial rule. As the country enters a new era of independence, so does Ralph Compton (played at different stages by Zachary Fox and Nicholas Hoult, no longer the awkward child in 'About a Boy').

Ralph becomes aware of his mother Lauren’s (Miranda Richardson) affair with a local man, and when she leaves his father Harry (Gabriel Byrne) the young boy is left to care for his increasingly alcoholic father. When Harry remarries Ruby, an American woman (Emily Watson), Ralph begins to see his colonial background from an outsider’s perspective and ultimately learns to make peace with his broken family.

One hopes fervently, when a local makes it big overseas, for a triumphant return in the “local boy makes good” style. Unfortunately, Grant has created a film that is self-indulgent and ultimately unsatisfying. The jokes are occasionally good and the performances (as would be expected from such a cast) often wonderful, but the dialogue is the hackneyed, trite cliché of soap-opera and the direction laboured and less than impressive.

It seems an incongruous pity that a man who has worked with directors such as Scorsese, Coppola, Jane Campion and Robert Altman, and with writers of the calibre of Bruce Robinson could get it so wrong.

All the tender, dependable mainstays of a charming film are there: a young man’s first kiss; a colonial am-dram production of 'Camelot' fraught (of course) with egos and comic scenarios; the ballsy, brassy Ruby’s immersion in colonial culture, her refusal to capitulate to its pretensions and her insistence on teaching the housekeeper to read.

But while each of these themes, dealt with correctly, should be capable of bringing a tear to the eye and a warmth to the heart, Grant glosses over them like so much incidental fodder. He prefers, rather, to focus on the relationship between the boy and his father.

Grant clearly idolised his father (this much is clear from the film itself, although his autobiography provides further evidence), but it is difficult to sympathise with the drunken, abusive, self-pitying Harry who goes so far as to brandish a loaded weapon at his teenaged son.

Byrne puts his heart into the role, but his character nonetheless remains a part of the “wah-wah, hoity-toity”, decadent colonial community whom the film satirises. Meanwhile Lauren’s adultery, which seems an almost justifiable escape from this oppressive lifestyle, causes her to be all but vilified by the film.

The story may be a true one, but it is also exhaustingly familiar: the adultery, the broken family, the colonial lifestyle, the discovery by an adolescent of the hard-knock facts of life — all themes done to death on the Hallmark channel and given no fresh breath by Grant’s African treatment. Those characters who do redeem themselves do so unconvincingly and too long after the audience has lost all sympathy for them.

The film’s music, too, is annoying and only serves to create confusion. While the period portrayed is 1969 to 1971, Grant has chosen to use the music of his father’s generation as background (Nat King Cole, the Andrews Sisters) which, combined with the outdated 'White Mischief' atmosphere of colonial Africa, leads to a timewarped sense that one is watching a war-time drama.

For all that he likes to refer to himself as “Swazi”, Grant is clearly a naturalised Englishman through and through. It would be a mistake to attend a screening of 'Wah-Wah' expecting an African film — Swaziland provides little more than an attractive backdrop, the African characters are reduced to mere ciphers (a tragic waste of local talent) and the rich and fascinating history of the era fades to almost total obscurity.