High Hopes (1988) User Reviews

Thatcher's London through the eyes of a socialist.

[p_adkins2004 · 8/10 · 11 March 2007]

Released in 1988, this is Mike Leigh's (director of Vera Drake) sublime comedy which examines the social climate of 1980s London.

I really liked this film, it centres on one extended family living in London during the Thatcher years. Cyril is a Marxist, who does despite his strong values and views chooses not to act on them, giving the world up for a hopeless cause. His partner, Shirley, desperately wants a baby, despite Cyril's strong views that the world is already "over-populated". Living in the last council house on a now yuppie infested road is Cyril's mum. A member of the generation who has been forgotten, she is slowly losing her marbles, much to the distaste of her neighbours. And as for Cyril's sister, Valerie, who lives in the social climbing climate of the middle class, she has seemingly to forgotten her roots and family ties, no doubt due to her excessive drinking of cheap champagne and her leeching husband.

This film is a brilliant gem of 1980s British cinema, despite its clear socialist values (it's cartoonish portrayal of the rich and yuppie somewhat softens the blow of its left wing message), it brings up so many interesting questions in an intelligent manner, portraying all its characters from a variety of angles and political stances, its hard not to like Cyril, but when he criticises a young 'active' Marxist follower for planning to open a market stall, he is shown to be hypocritical.

Leigh' doesn't just direct, but also write, and the script is water tight. It is extremely witty, just full of emotion and very down to earth.

This film is a very good snap shot of life in a variety of social situations and views in the churning world of the 1980s as the capitalistic London really began to boom. It is a flick that will not doubt have you smiling from cheek to cheek, yet also leave you feeling emotionally vulnerable and self-questioning.

funny, sad, and sweet!

[framptonhollis · 8/10 · 28 June 2017]

Surprisingly, this is the first Mike Leigh film I have seen. and I am glad to finally be exploring his filmography since he has intrigued me for quite some time, and I am happy to say with full enthusiasm that my first Leigh movie watching experience was wonderful.

"High Hopes" is a slice of life type film in which there is little plot, but rather a series of events that serve almost as a two hour long snapshot taken at a very specific time in the main characters' lives. While there are many interconnected characters displayed, each with their own mini story arc that can range from light comedy to dark tragedy to somewhere in between, at the center of the film is a likable young couple. A political undercurrent runs throughout the final half hour of the film dealing with the state of England under Margaret Thatcher and the beliefs of a socialist and Marxist, which is all quite interesting even if it makes the film somewhat outdated (but, with me, that isn't much of a problem); however, the film, in the end, is no so much about politics and ideology, but more so about the human spirit and its many triumphs and failures, life and it's many ups and downs. I fell in love with some of the characters in this film, and always felt deep care and concern for them. One shot in particular will always remain in my memory; it is the haunting image of an elderly women on her seventieth birthday as her family explodes (not literally) into chaos behind her. We can only see the elderly women, and we can only hear her screaming, bickering family members under the melancholic sounds of the film's often bleak score. This fragile lady is left to do no less than stare into nothingness, a fragile victim of the world's evils. But...this film is not a hopeless tragedy; rather, it is a hopeful comedy in the end, for, in the end, positivity seems to conquer the tears and tragedies that plagued the film in earlier moments (although not EVERY character seems to receive a "happy ending").

This film is a(n often darkly) humorous look into the lives of some very realistic and unique individuals as they struggle and smile through life. It is a film about love, compassion, strength, weakness, loneliness, politics, society, intimacies, and more. A beautiful feat of comic and dramatic filmmaking that sadly remains overlooked and obscure to this very day; fortunately, Mike Leigh was still rewarded in later years with a reasonably successful and highly praised career made up of many movies critics claim to be masterpieces, many movies that I now cannot wait to get my hands on!

Really lovely movie

[McRib1 · 8/10 · 2 September 2006]

Of course the marketing people hype every movie like it's a cross between "Titanic" and "Wedding Crashers" but there is such a thing as a small lovely film and "High Hopes" is it. It's a comedy but nobody passes gas or accidentally drinks urine, so it's a cut above any comedy produced in the U.S. during the last thirty years. It's just about people, working class people in London trying to get by. But its got a good heart and the smiles it provides will stick with you longer than the brain-dead belly laughs strained over in Hollywood comedies. It just feels like real life. The actors don't seem to be acting. And you end up pretty hopeful regarding the human condition.

sad, hilarious cross-section of England in the 1980's

[mjneu59 · 9/10 · 27 November 2010]

Mike Leigh's bittersweet social satire dissected with devastating accuracy (and a sometimes heartbreaking sense of humor) the widening gap between the haves and have-nots in Margaret Thatcher's England, moving from transparent criticism to crass parody to, finally, a touching plea on behalf of the elderly. It's a gray little film, giddy and depressing all at once, although often as funny (and just as striking) as hearing fingernails scraped down a blackboard. Leigh's cross-section of British society rings true even at its most exaggerated, and his ear for language, whether mumbled Cockney slang or nasal upper-class snobbery, is pitch perfect.

The film is essentially a showcase for some wonderfully defined characters: marginalized counterculture Marxists Cyril and Shirley; Cyril's ultra-neurotic middle-class sister and her vulgar salesman husband; an infirm old mum; a pair of callous upscale neighbors; and an odd, occasional houseguest named Wayne. The plotting is furtive: nothing much happens over the course of the film, giving the cast plenty of room to stretch out in their roles. The characters and story lines were created by the entire cast through extensive pre-production rehearsals, but the finished film is remarkably cohesive, with acting so natural it could easily be mistaken for improvisation if it weren't so well written. The result is a film of rare and genuine emotion: it's either the gloomiest comedy ever made or a tragedy with no shortage of laughs.

Irony is a Dying Art

[russdean · 10/10 · 18 April 2003]

This is a magnificent film full of humour, dignity and tragedy. The two most compelling characters are the hirsute courier, Cyril, and his gardener girlfriend Shirley, socialists both, who have an ongoing, symbolic debate about whether to have a baby or not. In the meantime - no pun intended - the courier's mother is dying - tired, losing her short term memory, and lonely. Other important characters include two appalling yuppies - caricatures only if you had your eyes closed in 80s Britain - plus the courier's nouveau riche but working class sister and her misogynistic husband. Karl Marx's sad big head at Highgate cemetery also makes an entry into the film.

Mike Leigh is a wonderful talent - long may his film-making continue! Postscript: Great news the film is now available on DVD - see http://www.hopscotchfilms.com.au!

An low-key actor's film slathered too thick with the satire

[movieswithgreg · 6/10 · 28 May 2021]

This is typical Mike Leigh -- putting a friendly microscope to the whispered glorification of the british working class, by putting a critical microscope to the yuppie and grasping upper class.

It's a slow, quiet trudge that follows the most sensible, mature, compassionate people in the movie -- a quiet thirty-something marxist-leaning post-hippie couple trying to make it through life amidst the challenges of both the meek and the obnoxious people in their lives.

My biggest issue with this is that, in his effort to show how normal the marxists are, writer/director Leigh takes liberties to depict the yuppies and class aspirants as ridiculously grotesque, to the point of being unbelievably offensive. It's so unreal that it loses me in its social pantomime.

Like in Leigh's movie two years later, LIFE IS SWEET, Leigh likes to let his actors soar with their own eccentricities, so much so that it seems they're adlibbing half the lines and half their situations. That may work for the marxist filmmaking school, but it can be distracting to the point of constant irritation, namely Heather Tobias as Valerie. She was told to play toxically neurotic, and she overplays it with so much enthusiasm and artistic freedom, that it's utterly unbelievable in its grotesqueness. Very much like Tim Spall's character Aubrey in Life Is Sweet, an eccentric child like idiot who supposedly runs a restaurant, when in real life, such a person couldn't run a porta-john.

If Leigh didn't let so many of his actors run amok with so many pointless eccentricities, his films would probably have wider audiences (not that his work hasn't been abundantly acclaimed and rewarded). The stories don't need so much weirdness; this movie loses some of its power and narrative drive because of it.

I bet this story resonated more in 1988 UK than it does in today's U. S.

A very real slice of very real life.

[sign-3 · 10/10 · 31 May 2007]

A seemingly quaint period piece that articulates eternal issues. All the characters are so real I wondered if they were based on people I know, as I lived near to kings cross at that time. I now realise these characters are modern archetypes. Did mike Leigh invent the archetypes? The film making itself is so understated that I wondered if I was watching reality TV! The device of the opening character , to lead us into the lives of these characters is a stroke of genius! I always approach Leighs films thinking 'worthy but boring', but time and again he has me crying and laughing and everything in-between. This film will only get better with time.

Cartoonish and trite

[tetrahex · 22 March 2011]

I watched it after having seen the glowing reviews and references to mike Leigh's work, well all I saw was a cartoon. A political cheap shot that relies on such simplistic and exaggerated caricatures really only cheapens any point he is trying to make. The car salesman and his social-climbing wife are obnoxious to the point of absurdity, the posh folks next door are the same, all ice-cold and uncaring, basically he isn't doing so much social commentary as beating his point to death with such a ham-fisted delivery that he destroys his own credibility. Long shots of the elderly woman and her plight in this cartoon just come off as out of place in this film, on one hand it is pretending to explore real issues like aging and socialist ideas in thatchers Britain, but surrounded by the cartoonish back ground it just comes off as very pointless. You got where he was going in the first 25% of the film, and it doesn't really add anything from that point on, it just continues beating the dead horse, nothing much of real value is explored after that. Other reviews mention it explores dynamics of family and siblings and aging, but really it only touches on these in the most shallow way possible between the absurd moments of cartoonish acting. It is the kind of film you'd expect from a political hack, not a philosopher.

Depressing Comedy

[deepfrieddodo · 7/10 · 17 March 2021]

A melancholic comedy, and a social commentary on Thatcher's Britain for those unsupported. There isn't really a story at any point, the plot just unfolds to develop the main characters. Not particularly funny, other than an embarrassing nostalgia, but heavy in irony, and certainly only suitable for an audience who are fans of dry humour. Acting is superb from the leads, but the film as a whole is rather limited.

More bleak moments

[MOscarbradley · 8/10 · 14 January 2007]

The title of Mike Leigh's first film was "Bleak Moments" and he's been having them, on and off, ever since. Leigh's films are the comedic equivalent of the Theatre of Cruelty. The pain running through a Mike Leigh movie far outweighs anything 'funny'. You wonder why they are called comedies at all. And the pain is usually the pain of belonging to a family unit. In "High Hopes" the family unit is Edna Dore's almost catatonic London pensioner, her appalling daughter Valerie and her equally appalling husband Martin and her son Cyril and his partner Shirley. Dore's next-door neighbours are a couple of Sloane Rangers with a double-barreled name and if Leigh has a fault it's that he can't help lampooning Valerie and Martin and the snooty neighbours. (Valerie is a clone of the awful Beverly in "Abigail's Party"). These are cartoon characters and they don't ring true.

However Dore, who does virtually nothing, is quietly magnificent as the mother whose life has evaporated in front of her eyes and Philip Davis and Ruth Sheen are heartbreakingly real as the socialist son and the woman he loves but not enough to give her the child she craves. Indeed, Davis and Sheen give the kind of performances that seem to transcend mere 'acting' and which in a just world would be showered with prizes. (Sheen and Dore did win European Film Awards). In fact, everyone is first-rate even the caricatured neighbours and the lamentable Valerie. An uneven work, then, but when Davis and Sheen are on screen it's as good as Leigh gets.

high hopes

[mossgrymk · 7/10 · 6 June 2021]

This is early Mike Leigh before he achieved that perfect balance in tone between critical and affectionate that distinctly marks his best films. Consequently, while there are wonderfully observed sad and funny bits (like the visit to Karl Marx's grave and the way the Marxist couple treats the lost waif in search of his mom) the main set pieces soon descend into undue caricature (the Yuppie couple in the gentrified housing block) or nastiness (the mom's 70th b-day party). Give it a B minus if only for Ruth Sheen's warm hearted performance that would foreshadow Alison Steadman in the later, better "Life Is Sweet".

Social satire that is not always comfortable viewing

[Pedro_H · 9/10 · 24 October 2002]

The life and times of an extended family in 1980's London.

Director Mike Leigh is probably the closest the UK has to Woody Allen: and like Allen his films go from absolute classics to barely watchable. Here he is about as good as he ever will be - indeed there are scenes from this movie that are, in there own way, as profound and original as anything that has been put down on film.

Who else would let the camera linger on the face of an old woman just at the point of losing her sanity? Or dare to present a couple going nowhere as the centrepiece of a feature film? Or even present "success stories" (a yuppie couple) as rank and selfish? Here lower-middle-and-upper crusts are clowns, it is only a matter of levels and angles.

Indeed, Leigh never gives us anything to cling to. Nor does he want to present hope that things will change for the better. Take the central couple Shirley and Cyril (Philip Davies and Ruth Sheen). Why are they living like squatters in their own tiny flat? Why can they not buy a proper bed (they sleep on the floor) or look for somewhere better - after all they both work? Apart from the question of a child (she wants - he doesn't) they both seem happy to live in squalor. In Shirley we at least have someone who cares for other people.

The old lady - through which the story is told - is on her last legs as regards living an independent life. The house she lives in has become neglected and the area she lives in no longer contain her type of people. Her neurotic daughter is so wrapped up in her own suburban life that she does seem to realise her mother is at the point of collapse. The scene where she holds a birthday party for her aged mother is agony - not for her confused mother - but for us the viewer.

Some of the performances are a little of the top (Leigh's films let actors improvise) and I could have lived without so much of the melancholy music track that rubs everything in. But this is the only film since One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest that lets humour and tragedy sit side by side without blinking.

Director Leigh gets under your skin and takes you places we haven't been on film before - but I am not sure they are places I would want to go on a regular basis. He is a one-off, but I am secretly glad about that.

It is amusing

[christopher-underwood · 7/10 · 10 September 2022]

It is amusing but really rather silly much of the time. I loved the end when the couple from the old flats take the mother up on the roof after her 70 old party that of course was a terrible time, or funny. There is something of the past to see Marx and talk of the revolution, the times of Thatcher's days and also the yuppies. Indeed the upper-middle class couple really is just a pantomime although with the old mother it is sad for her locked out of her own house and they really just what to get her out of theirs. Their children, of course, are no better how really just what to get on with their own, and thinking about their silly party.

Disappointing

[josephemeryprank · 3/10 · 6 August 2013]

I found this film embarrassing - no sophistication, absolutely no subtlety; it does not stand the test of time. The relationship between the two leads is OK - but the over-acting done by the sister, her husband and the people next door made me cringe. The supposed under-acting by the mother was nearly as bad - but I blame that on the director - spelling it out that he's not spelling it out for us. It is all so obvious - one is surprised it was made by an experienced director - it is like a classroom assignment from a group of 16 year olds. And all those fake working-class accents - I grew up in Essex and I lived in Bethnal Green for 10 years and I never heard anyone speak like that. The music is wonderful but far too loud and in your face. On the plus side, I loved the ending - maybe I'm sentimental after all.

Money isn't everything

[davidjack · 8/10 · 13 February 2000]

The paragraph describing this film said it was about a group of people who come together when Mum locks herself out. This is misleading as that is only a small part of the film , there is much more to it than that, I saw this film as part of a Mike Leigh feature on TV.

I straight away recognised Philip Davis who also stared in Mike Leigh's 'Grown Ups' even though it was 20 years earlier that I had seen that. He looked very similar but his character, Cyril was much better tempered than Dick had been. Cyril and his partner Shirley are the only ones who seem to care about poor old Mum. They are also kind hearted enough to help out a stranger who was lost and confused. Her other daughter Valarie appears to care more about her dog and her own life. The toffee nosed couple next door would rather leave the poor old women standing out in the cold when she locks herself out and don't want anyone to get in the way of their life.

This film lets us see that having money doesn't always mean happiness. Cyril and Shirley are much more contented than their richer neighbours and sister. They are also much less selfish. I would rather have them any day

A Fully Developed Creative Process.

[rsoonsa · 8/10 · 22 January 2005]

HIGH HOPES provides most strengths and few weaknesses of its superb director, Mike Leigh, with the former category including his choice of footage from a typically improvisational collection of scenes; avoidance of a formulaic scenario when comparing and contrasting three widely disparate but plot-connected couples, in a Margaret Thatcher administered England; skill in controlling mood adjustment and visual constructs that generally serve to intensify viewer response; and his canny employment of technicians to implement effective staging design. Leigh's bent toward usage of politically charged economic allusions as a referent to class structure and social change leads here to role stereotypes, indeed even caricature, during scenes wherein emphasis is upon parody, as only one of the couples, former Hippies Cyril (Philip Davis) and Shirley (Ruth Sheen), is permitted to display humanity whereas Shirley's brother Martin (Philip Jackson) and his wife Valerie (Heather Tobias), along with the gentrified Booth-Braines (David Bamber and Lesley Manville) are essentially burlesque figures. In her patented persona as an old woman lapsing into dementia, Edna Doré becomes a linchpin about whom the others revolve, with Sheen taking acting honours with her finely nuanced performance as a societal rebel beginning to crave, albeit non-bourgeois, motherhood. Cinematographer Roger Pratt, along with ever inventive Leigh, use closeups to potent effect for a film that would more nearly approach greatness if a hammy lack of restraint from some talented players, although frequently highly comic, would have received closer directoral oversight.

My least favourite Mike Leigh film.

[valleyjohn · 7/10 · 26 September 2011]

I love Mike Leigh movies. They are not to everyone's taste but there is something about the way he gets the actors interacting that i find fascinating. High Hopes though , is my least likable of his films.

We see the same actors crop up in this as we do in most of his films. Ruth Sheen , Phillip Davis and Edna Dore are good but unusually , Leslie Manville is very poor as the posh totty.

There is a lot of overacting in this film and that is not usual for a Mike Leigh film but it is one of his early efforts , so it's forgivable.

I had high hopes for high Hopes but sadly it quite happened.

No, he ain't Michael Douglas

[Quinoa1984 · 8/10 · 10 May 2023]

Edna Dore as Mrs Bender is one of the saddest performances/characters ever created, especially as one realizes with Leigh through direct collaboration, in an English speaking drama. Any time his camera is on her face for an extended period, you just want her to fly away out of there like Marcello in 8 1/2. On the other side, Lesly Manville in her supporting role as one of the hoity-toitiest women you could ever not want to come across, but she appears vital and real and makes what seems like a cartoon character on the surface to still have a level of sympathy (or... no maybe not, but she isn't as thin as a Hollywood movie would show her, she's made out of someone she and Leigh saw in their lives).

High Hopes has a few laughs here and there, like that desperate moment with the chess table or some off-the-cuff lines (Mrs Bender's reaction to the skeleton poster on the wall); but this is a dramatic story in a few days of these people from strikingly different class strata - the Socialists (or one should say the Aspiring Socialists Stuck in the Capitalist Machine) and the Conservatives (the ones who have exercise bikes in their homes and put on lots of jewelry and make up and think stuff will be their salvation) - and how the personal is always political and visa versa.

It's hard not to think about how Leigh draws the so to speak "types" here, and it's no confusion where his sympathies lie, nd the Cyril and Shirley characters, for all their problems and his prickly nature, are more warmly drawn than Mrs Bender's kids who are much more dysfunctional (and the one daughter is practically having a nervous breakdown in that birthday scene, goodness that's powerful work).

But what I come away with and why it makes an impression as being more than a savagely satirical rap on how the anti-Thatcherites and the Thatcherites of the period saw one another is that Leigh has the core idea about family and the impact of what someone does or actively doesnt do for others (or forces someone to do when its clear its not the right time, again that nightmare of a birthday "party"): people have kids in some large part because they can give to them, and then by a point some day they can give back to their elders. Ultimately, Cyril does come around to the idea of having a child, and it doesn't have to do with his love of Marx or his political ideologies, rather that it simply would be good to care for someone else and to create a life with this woman he loves so deeply.

If the contrasts are drawn by the director, and to come back to how his characters and actors are mixing together the personal and political, it's in how people should simply not be so indifferent and/or brutal and uncaring, and that so much (if not practically all) of the political strife in the world, especially from Conservatives, comes from self centeredness and a pathological unwillingness to do much for someone who simply needs help (or, say, to get their purse and keys in a moment of common elderly confusion... no wait that was me the other day, but I digress). Very good movie.

High Hopes Low Fruition

[writers_reign · 7/10 · 26 November 2006]

To watch a movie like this again - I saw it on release and now it's a freebie with a Broadsheet - is to wonder aloud why Mike Leigh, who proves here that he CAN write an Original screenplay, felt compelled to rip off Chabrol's Une Affaire des femmes in Vera Drake. Like much, if not all of Leigh's output this is an ensemble piece and if the labels on each character are writ in Bold Face - Socialist brother, Capitalist sister, Yuppie couple etc - that's just a minor flaw in Leigh's make up, he is, after all, firmly entrenched in the Ken Loach anti-Capitalist camp but unlike Loach he does remember to entertain the audience and not just preach at them. This movie revolves around a fragmented family; brother Cyril is so steeped in Socialism that he is allowed to make schoolboyish statements like 'the day they machine gun the Royal Family is the day I'll wear a tie', whilst sister Valerie is heavily into conspicuous consumption and their old mum is slowly descending into a twilight world of short-term memory loss and confusion. Mum still lives alone in the house she's presumably occupied all her married life and where the brother and sister have been raised but the once run-down neighborhood is going up-market so the yuppie couple next door comprise a third couple. This is primarily a vehicle for an ensemble cast and each actor takes his own particular ball and runs with it whilst the director juggles those same balls. It was perhaps a mistake to let Heather Tobias play not only Abigail from Abigail's Party but play it in the style of Leigh's ex-wife Alison Steadman who created the role of Abigail but against that there will be younger viewers who never saw Abigail's Party. The sequences involving Jason Watkins peter out not quite half way through which raises the question of what they were doing there in the first place. The biggest negative is that the film is primarily a study of 'North London' types (Breaking And Entering uses the same locale)and other North Londoners will recognise and possibly sneer at themselves and their friends/neighbors but it's difficult to know what they'd make of it in Leigh's native Salford. If you like fine acting you came to the right place but if you like taut, well-made screenplays chances are you'll be disappointed.

Proper tragicomedy with a twist of Karl Marx ;)

[bvsf-991-889094 · 9/10 · 16 February 2019]

This is quite underrated title. Loved the subtle humour. Very British movie. The class standoff is a bit unexpected angle but proves adding to the comedy of situation. This is not typical Holywood bestseller movie in the cinema but the one to enjoy quitely at home (without interruptions), you need to go with the flow and live through the story. I personally enjoyed it a lot!

Don't Be Bitter

[boblipton · 7/10 · 28 May 2021]

Edna Doré's birthday is coming up. She's a feeble old widow living in a house in a gentrifying bit of London. We encounter her posh neighbors, her Marxist son, her upwardly mobile sot of a daughter, their partners, a couple of neighbors, and a guy wandering around looking for a job. Mostly she seems out of it.

It's a movie written and directed by Mike Leigh, which means, in this period, that it doesn't seem to have been written at all, just an assortment of people who run into each other and and act awkwardly with each other, like the Method actor's advice: don't act, behave. But how do you behave when it turns out you don't kow how to behave?

It doesn't appear to be a story, except that it is, centering on Miss Doré's son, played by Phil Davis, and his live-in girlfriend, played by Ruth Sheen. It's a beautifully realized relationship. I guess that's how Leigh wrote it.

Suggested name

[cruzett · 22 February 2017]

I would like to suggest a name for the film High Hopes in Brazilian Portuguese because we do not have it yet. I researched the Internet and found this European name "Grandes Ambições" that is compatible with the idea of the author of the film. My Brazilian suggestion would be "Hiperesperançosos" a good name, it is short and covers the expectations and anecdotes of the rising working class.

Another Great Leigh Movie...

[eskimosound · 10/10 · 26 July 2021]

This is another great Mike Leigh movie. Angles, lighting, timing, pace, script, subject matter...it's all spot on. His movies are natural. He gets it right where Ken Loach doesn't.

Dated comedy depicts class war

[rowmorg · 6/10 · 18 December 2009]

Mike Leigh is always good value at the low-budget end, appealing to lefties and loonies alike. It's interesting how this picture has dated in the 21 years since 1988. The main couple, hash-smoking drop-outs Cyril (Philip Davis) and Shirley (the charming Ruth Sheen) both have proper jobs they can live on, for example, instead of half-starving on three. They are glad-handed with strangers, something else that has been eroded. On the other hand, Cyril's elderly mum (Edna Doré) is depicted having little or no social services, which paradoxically would probably not apply today. There are no immigrants or brown faces in the picture, which now looks very strange. Given these changes, the picture takes a round swipe at the Yuppies of the 80s, who brashly moved into lower-class areas and gentrified them. The gulf between Mum's people and her neighbours (Lesley Manville & David Bamber) is deep and wide, and still prevails on the tight little island of Albion. It all comes out when Cyril's social-climbing sister's hysterical laughter turns into tears of misery, frustration and defeat: a fine filmic moment. Definitely worth a look for social comedy fans.

stereotyping - a comforting cop-out?

[lindacamidge · 5/10 · 21 August 2007]

Ah, the comfort of the stereotype. Like a pair of warm slippers, with a little device set into the toe so that you only have to stir slightly to hear the reassuring sound of communal laughter.

I won't labour the point. But an added annoyance was the difficult-to-swallow characterisation of the mother who, supposedly at seventy (which fits the ages of her children) acts at least five years older than my middle class mother (83) or - more tellingly - than my widowed working class mother-in-law (78). No, Mike, those crunch years for children come in your late fifties and sixties, not in your thirties.

I think I might have found this film comforting in the eighties - when I remember feeling vaguely discontented and at odds with the world, and not being sure why; as I didn't live in London, I had only the vaguest idea of what a yuppie was. It would have set up a myth, an enemy: in fact, isn't that what we used to call a paper tiger? Comforting, but ultimately too easy to be useful?