Mike Bassett: England Manager
*1/2
Cinema
Releases - September 28, 2001
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. 89
minutes. Directed by Steve Barron. Written by John R. Spring, Rob Sprackling.
Starring Ricky Tomlinson, Amanda Redman, Bradley Walsh, Phil Jupitus, Martin
Bashir.
There is a certain irony to the way Britain is
crazier about soccer than any other country and yet puts together teams that
get worse every year. There is also irony in the fact that many of our players
and managers come from other countries while the sport inspires more nationalism
than anything else. And there is comedy value in the stupidity of contemporary
football personalities -- once we had men like Best and Charlton representing
us, but now most of our young players speak with the clarity of school
dropouts.
We are well aware of all of the above. TV shows
like "They Think It's All Over" and "A Question of Sport" tease every piece
of sports news available, as do the regulars of every pub in England. Nothing
in the football world cries out to be sent up in a feature film; all the
fun to be had from it is already being had, and the foibles are too obvious
and frivolous to be made into full-length satire.
That's why "Mike Bassett: England Manager"
is such an unnecessary movie. It tells the story of how a third-division
manager played by Ricky Tomlinson ends up getting control of the national
team and taking it on a rocky journey through the World Cup. The screenplay
struggles to find anything funny enough to make us laugh out loud or even
justify the film's existence, and the style of the picture is dreary as
hell.
The film begins with shots of the England committee
discussing how to find a new manager. One member declares "We've looked round
France, Italy and Germany, with no luck. Now we're going to have to look
through... um... England." That is the movie's one funny line -- it's all
downhill from there.
The squad Tomlinson picks is a bunch of caricatures,
featuring shallow comic representations of players like Vinnie Jones and
Paul Gascgoine. Tomlinson's own lines are inanities such as "I wish my dad
could see me now -- he was like a father figure to me." And the film's
progression through the World Cup is just one embarrassment after another,
as the team causes riots and loses not only games, but also the civility
of the press and the respect of fans. Things culminate with Tomlinson getting
drunk, dancing on top of a hotel bar in Greece and waking up to find everyone
calling for his resignation. This isn't funny, it's
depressing.
The most off-putting thing about "Mike Bassett:
England Manager" is the way it's shot in a crummy pseudo-documentary style.
That stylistic choice is fine for a movie like "Best in Show", which has
outrageously funny things to lampoon, or "This is Spinal Tap", which is making
fun of the documentary form, but here it just seems grim. The mainstream
audiences who attend "Mike Bassett" will likely not be used to handheld
camerawork or this kind of parody in general, and this movie sure ain't the
best initiation.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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