Ah, the best and funniest movie about female football fans, only slightly better than the 1982 saga of teenage delusion set in North London (qv). By the way, I just watched this on Film 4 [2008-12-21] and am ruing my inability to set the PVR).
This is easily my second favourite football movie after "Mike Bassett: England Manager", but this time with the added twist of looking like a guerrilla piece of movie-making from a team who apparently keep making movies which are banned in the country in which they are made (just think about the bit where the girls are taken from the stadium just as the Sun is setting: fast reactions all round).
It is rare for a movie to make me laugh out loud, but when the rural soldier escorted one of the girls into the lavvies while forcing her to wear an inpromptu mask made from a poster of Ali Daei, I couldn't stop waking the others in the house with my snorts, especially when the young soldier misunderstood the grandfather's calls for assistance...
Speaking of the toilets, I just wish I could speak Farsi so that I could work out the writing on the toilet walls (yes, there were a few scribblings in Roman script, but they mostly referred to wanky American rock bands).
Also, on the rural-and-Farsi theme, don't you reckon that Omid Djalili sounds like a yokel when he talks Farsi? Listen to the custody sergeant in this movie and then go "Yup."
I'm not going to bore on about the sexual politics of Iran, and I'm not going to bore on about the dubious acting; my love for this movie comes from the script and the editing: top notch stuff.
Here's a list of my top favourite football movies: 1. Mike Bassett, England Manager 2. Offside 3. Those Glory Glory Days 4. A Shot at Glory 5. The Arsenal Stadium Mystery
This is easily my second favourite football movie after "Mike Bassett: England Manager", but this time with the added twist of looking like a guerrilla piece of movie-making from a team who apparently keep making movies which are banned in the country in which they are made (just think about the bit where the girls are taken from the stadium just as the Sun is setting: fast reactions all round).
It is rare for a movie to make me laugh out loud, but when the rural soldier escorted one of the girls into the lavvies while forcing her to wear an inpromptu mask made from a poster of Ali Daei, I couldn't stop waking the others in the house with my snorts, especially when the young soldier misunderstood the grandfather's calls for assistance...
Speaking of the toilets, I just wish I could speak Farsi so that I could work out the writing on the toilet walls (yes, there were a few scribblings in Roman script, but they mostly referred to wanky American rock bands).
Also, on the rural-and-Farsi theme, don't you reckon that Omid Djalili sounds like a yokel when he talks Farsi? Listen to the custody sergeant in this movie and then go "Yup."
I'm not going to bore on about the sexual politics of Iran, and I'm not going to bore on about the dubious acting; my love for this movie comes from the script and the editing: top notch stuff.
Here's a list of my top favourite football movies: 1. Mike Bassett, England Manager 2. Offside 3. Those Glory Glory Days 4. A Shot at Glory 5. The Arsenal Stadium Mystery