Swimming With Men (12A.)
Directed by Oliver Parker.
Starring Rob Brydon, Rupert Graves, Jim Carter, Charlotte Riley, Daniel Mays, Thomas Turgoose, Adeel Akhtar and Jane Horrocks. 97 mins
Though Full Monty combinations are almost endless, I think we've worked our way through to the male synchronised swimming Full Monty about a decade earlier than expected. And this is doing the full Full Monty: it isn't just a lark, but a vehicle to explore male uncertainty and fragility, along with a healthy slice of midlife crisis.
Rob Brydon is a dissatisfied accountant who, after a marital tiff with wife Horrocks, ends up with a group of disaffected males who have decided to form a synchronised swimming team, made up of six people you've probably seen on telly and two others that nobody talks to. It's a project against the meaninglessness of life, with its own Fight Club style rule book.
It's slickly put together and looks better than these kinds of affairs usually do. (There are though a few too many shots early on of Brydon as the still centre while everything else around him has been put on fast forward, to show his alienation.) The cast is all very agreeable company but after a bright start there are precious few big laughs and one of the biggest is a direct rip from Caddyshack. (I know it's an old film but the chocolate bar in the pool is the one thing people remember about it. That and Bill Murray's Cinderella tale monologue. And the gofer. And "I'm Alright" by Kenny Loggins.)
It's one thing to be contrived but SWM is blatant about it. It's supposed to be a big revelation (spoiler) when Brydon admits that he contrived the marital riff but we could see that for ourselves. And after that you are waiting for the other characters to fess up to the all other desperate contrivances in the film, but these we are just meant to ignore. SWM may well have enough to make for a good time for some, but it seems ironic that a film about men trying to escape from the meaninglessness of their existence, should be content with so many lazy cliches.
Directed by Oliver Parker.
Starring Rob Brydon, Rupert Graves, Jim Carter, Charlotte Riley, Daniel Mays, Thomas Turgoose, Adeel Akhtar and Jane Horrocks. 97 mins
Though Full Monty combinations are almost endless, I think we've worked our way through to the male synchronised swimming Full Monty about a decade earlier than expected. And this is doing the full Full Monty: it isn't just a lark, but a vehicle to explore male uncertainty and fragility, along with a healthy slice of midlife crisis.
Rob Brydon is a dissatisfied accountant who, after a marital tiff with wife Horrocks, ends up with a group of disaffected males who have decided to form a synchronised swimming team, made up of six people you've probably seen on telly and two others that nobody talks to. It's a project against the meaninglessness of life, with its own Fight Club style rule book.
It's slickly put together and looks better than these kinds of affairs usually do. (There are though a few too many shots early on of Brydon as the still centre while everything else around him has been put on fast forward, to show his alienation.) The cast is all very agreeable company but after a bright start there are precious few big laughs and one of the biggest is a direct rip from Caddyshack. (I know it's an old film but the chocolate bar in the pool is the one thing people remember about it. That and Bill Murray's Cinderella tale monologue. And the gofer. And "I'm Alright" by Kenny Loggins.)
It's one thing to be contrived but SWM is blatant about it. It's supposed to be a big revelation (spoiler) when Brydon admits that he contrived the marital riff but we could see that for ourselves. And after that you are waiting for the other characters to fess up to the all other desperate contrivances in the film, but these we are just meant to ignore. SWM may well have enough to make for a good time for some, but it seems ironic that a film about men trying to escape from the meaninglessness of their existence, should be content with so many lazy cliches.
