A Blue in a City of Reds (There's Only One Jimmy Grimble (DVD))

Member Name: dave27

Product:	There's Only One Jimmy Grimble (DVD)
Date:	24/02/02 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great playing, Great songs, Great story

Disadvantages: A bit too lovely

MANN-CHIS-TAH!!!

If you've ever spent any time at all there you'll understand exactly what the title means - to be a Man City fan - a simple, innocent, masochistic, naive Blue - in a City like that, where all the brains get theirselves down to Old Trafford, where the prawn sucking, bloated, arrogant, smug bastard Big Nobs turn out, is to know true Purgatory - ever the dog end, left over eating underdogs among their affluent richer relations.

A City fan learns to adopt that pitiful hang dog expression very early in life, born to expect little and receive even less - they may be downtrodden and dismal losers, but they dream of glory, of one day pitting themselves as equals, as once they did in the days of Bell, Lee, Summerbee and Marsh when they were Up There, mixing it with the biggest of the big boys, back then when United were perennial under-achievers, when their magical triumvirate of Law, Best and Charlton couldn't win a corner let alone a Cup.

Now that mythology, the magic of Manchester, is what Jimmy Grimble is all about, and you get a wonderful fairytale story of young love, sport and the Theatre of Dreams, rooted firmly in the muck and mud of Rusholme and Moss Side and Cheetham Hill and a thousand back to back terraces.

It's a fanciful little tale right enough, quintessentially English in that small time, small vista sort of way, but undeniably gripping and quite, quite splendid, undeniably a little masterpiece which you'd have to travel a million miles to find something similar to.

It tells the story of the downtrodden loser Jimmy Grimble, who is bullied and reviled wherever he goes, but who suddenly becomes the unlikely star of his school team when he is given some magical old timer's boots, and starts shooting goals home from every unlikely angle known to man.

True fairy tales never happen of course, as we all know, but films ain't always about realism and the truth and grit
ty reality - at times they need to be doused with a little fairy dust and people like this sort of magic and I certainly do...

Please watch this film and allow yourself to be soaked up in the atmosphere of British movie making at its ultimate - a hundred brilliant performances, a hundred sharp lines, a hundred minutes of absolute charm and sheer, total enjoyment.

Ray Winstone, Gina McKee, Ben Miller and Robert Carlyle, of course, but above all of these you get those bloody wonderful kids, not actors but born livers of fairy tales.

Football at the very worst of times is a very uplifting and enthralling experience, but told as it is here in true Boy's Own fashion, it is classical, magical stuff, the sort of thing that sends you off to bed happy with a little warm feeling inside you, even when you're a jug eared loser like Jimmy Grimble.

Lewis McKenzie plays Jimmy Grimble, a rabid City fan who finally manages to get into his school's Under 16 side, despite the bullying of Gorgeous Gordon (Bobby Power), a thug who thinks he's David Beckham and whose Dad exerts all sorts of influence to get him star billing. He's undoubtedly a good player, but is a spiteful little bleeder, and one of the most thoroughly evil villains of the year. However, the confidence which Jimmy gets from the magic boots inspires him to turn in match winning performance after match winning performance to take them all the way to the final at Maine Road and you know they're going to live happily ever after (aren't they?)?

Director: John Hay
Producers: Sarah Radclyffe, Jeremy Bolt, Alison Jackson
Screenplay: Simon Mayle, John Hay, Rik Carmichael
DOP: John De Borman
Editor: Oral Norrie Ottey
Production Designer: Michael Carlin
Production Company: Sarah Radclyffe Productions / Impact Films
Distributor: Pathe Distribution
UK, 2000, 110 mins

PS Absolutely brilliant soundtrack

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