Another one of director Mike Leigh's languorous,semi-improvised essays of working-class life,ALL OR NOTHING seems a somewhat deliberate attempt to be as relentlessly miserable and pessimistic as possible;set on a dismal,down-trodden South London council estate,with plain,overweight,ugly,dissipated,resigned-to-their-fate tenants and their families,with a maudlin violin-laden musical theme for good measure.
It was surely the case that Leigh knew even before the cameras rolled that such a scenario would be the easiest way to keep the majority of cinema seats vacant,as other similarly themed UK-based social dramas.Aside from the profanities abound,it does have the feel of a TV production,where it looks and plays better on the small screen.
The film's saving grace is that at least it has relatively sympathetic characters at it's centre.Timothy Spall has and never will be Cary Grant,but he is nonetheless a very fine actor,and still manages to add some depth to his taxi driver role with an eternally hangdog expression.But Lesley Manville,playing Spall's wife,gives the film's best performance,with a painfully honest love scene involving them both towards the end easily the film's highlight.
Aside from the relentless gloom,the film's main problems are it's sheer mundaneness.There may be a quietly effective,observational realism about them,but relatively little happens and some sequences are far too over-stretched and become very tedious.Leigh's habit of caricatures comes to the fore with a voluble Frenchwoman and drunken housewife,and the film's pacing is deadening,moving like a tortoise on Valium.But along with Spall and Manville,the supporting performances are solid all round,with the familiar comic actor Sam Kelly coming off best as a downcast,late middle-aged cleaner who makes half-hearted,hopeless attempts in trying to date the teen-aged daughter of Spall and Manville (Alison Garland),who suffers from shyness and obesity.Her foul-mouthed,lazy,even more obese brother (James Corden)suffers a heart attack while playing football,which in fact brings the family closer together and helps the film end on a mildly optimistic note.
But this is untypical in light of what went previously;ALL OR NOTHING is not unwatchable,and Mike Leigh is a talented filmmaker,but less footage,better pacing and more humour would've made a better film.But Leigh and the actors would probably not have liked that,it would've made them more happier!
RATING:6 out of 10.
It was surely the case that Leigh knew even before the cameras rolled that such a scenario would be the easiest way to keep the majority of cinema seats vacant,as other similarly themed UK-based social dramas.Aside from the profanities abound,it does have the feel of a TV production,where it looks and plays better on the small screen.
The film's saving grace is that at least it has relatively sympathetic characters at it's centre.Timothy Spall has and never will be Cary Grant,but he is nonetheless a very fine actor,and still manages to add some depth to his taxi driver role with an eternally hangdog expression.But Lesley Manville,playing Spall's wife,gives the film's best performance,with a painfully honest love scene involving them both towards the end easily the film's highlight.
Aside from the relentless gloom,the film's main problems are it's sheer mundaneness.There may be a quietly effective,observational realism about them,but relatively little happens and some sequences are far too over-stretched and become very tedious.Leigh's habit of caricatures comes to the fore with a voluble Frenchwoman and drunken housewife,and the film's pacing is deadening,moving like a tortoise on Valium.But along with Spall and Manville,the supporting performances are solid all round,with the familiar comic actor Sam Kelly coming off best as a downcast,late middle-aged cleaner who makes half-hearted,hopeless attempts in trying to date the teen-aged daughter of Spall and Manville (Alison Garland),who suffers from shyness and obesity.Her foul-mouthed,lazy,even more obese brother (James Corden)suffers a heart attack while playing football,which in fact brings the family closer together and helps the film end on a mildly optimistic note.
But this is untypical in light of what went previously;ALL OR NOTHING is not unwatchable,and Mike Leigh is a talented filmmaker,but less footage,better pacing and more humour would've made a better film.But Leigh and the actors would probably not have liked that,it would've made them more happier!
RATING:6 out of 10.