Red Card Offence (Mike Bassett: England Manager (DVD))

Member Name: gothiron

Product:	Mike Bassett: England Manager (DVD)
Date:	22/10/01 (163 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: the odd funny throw-away line, original concept, had potential to be really good

Disadvantages: Bradley Walsh can't act for toffee (or play for them), hardly any football action, dated and basically not funny

I like football, I watch football, attend matches, am even a season ticket holder and frankly if there is anything vaguely football related on, I’ll watch it, so logically you would think that this film would be high on my “must get that for DVD” list. Well you couldn’t be more wrong.

This film was cringe-makingly awful, not even the strength of an actor like Ricky Tomlinson as the beleaguered Mike Bassett could bring this to a credible level. The direction and script are best described as naïve, relying on tired and cliched gags and stereotypes that might have been funny if this film had been totally set in the 70s as opposed being in present time.

The story is based around the trials and tribulations of Mike Bassett, the successful Norwich manager who is elected as England manager on the basis that he is the last man standing for the job, his quest is winning the world cup and that basically is the plot. The split camera work misses by an Andy Cole off-target mile and the mockumentary style never really gets off the ground. If someone had just had the sense to get this made as a Sunday evening premier drama type thing it would have been great, as an example of biting Brit-wit and comedy on the big screen it fails as miserably as Mike’s team of has-been footie players. It’s all very well having in-jokes and idiomatic humour but when 90% of the script is going to fly over the heads of any non-UK audience it just does seem a bit pointless. Anyone expecting a loveable rogue type portrayal by Ricky Tomlinson will be disappointed, you get a very one dimensional character who comes across lacking any understanding of what football is about nowadays. I’m guessing that he is meant to be a Graham Taylor/Terry Venables hybrid but this is only because I’m guessing that he refused the curly wig for the Keegan take-off.

As if all of this isn’t off-putting enough, there’s Bradl
ey Walsh in the cast list, who seemed out of his depth playing a clueless, unfunny and dim side-kick, a role he must surely have been born to play! The most amusing part was trying to identify the stereo-typed footballers with the real articles; Gazza, Stuart Pearce/David Batty, David Beckham and Andy Cole were fairly easy to relate to, the rest were perm any one from ten names that spring to mind. It’s a shame that there was no in depth character development of the players, it might have helped strengthen the script if not every scene had to have Mike Bassett in it for alleged comic effect.

There were one off laughs, the trip around “Norwich” on the bus being one of them, as was the dramatisation of the process of selection of the manager – I’m convinced there must have been an FA insider on the consultative side, but it was hardly the laugh-rout that was promised. The odd laugh in isolation doesn’t really reflect well on what was meant to have been a comedy.
Phill Jupitus’ role as a harden hack does deserve a mention as he put in a very credit worthy performance, in fact the press conferences were amongst the funniest scenes in the film, mainly because they were probably the most realistic.

I watched the film with my football loathing and football ignorant husband and he found it a lot funnier than I did, maybe the banter I experience on the terraces makes contrived football humour seem flat to me but I would be hard pushed to recommend this film to anyone, whether they liked, loathed or couldn’t give a stuff about the beautiful game.

The only consolation must be that they can’t be thinking of writing a sequel, they think it’s all over, please let it be!

Summary: