Bill Murray has spoken warmly of first time writer/director Ted Melfi’s ability to pen a script which is “not sentimental at all, which is how I like to see emotion delivered”. Strange, then, that St Vincent should in fact be positively ladled with life-affirming schmaltz and honkingly signposted feelgood sentiment. Murray plays irascible drunk (with a barely concealed heart of gold) Vincent, neighbour to newly arrived Maggie (Melissa McCarthy), whose 12-year-old-son, Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher), he grudgingly agrees to babysit. During illicit visits to the bar and the race track, Oliver and Vincent bond, the latter mellowing as his own personal pains are revealed (battlefield traumas, personal loss), the former discovering a subject for his high school assignment on the true nature of sanctity in the modern age. Meanwhile Naomi Watts goes for the full tart-with-a-heart caricature as pregnant Russian stripper Daka (“Gyeev me syaam dyollyars”), leaving McCarthy to dial things back down as a believably stressed single mum struggling to balance parenthood with inflexible working hours. For all its flaws, it’s enjoyable, at its best when Murray and Lieberher are left alone to chew the cud, swapping pithy philosophical observations with innocent charm.