For fans of Mike Leigh (High Hopes, Life Is Sweet), a bitter disappointment. It shows no letdown in his sense of character and environment: to wit, totally individualized and vivid caricatures, set off against a realistic backdrop -- an effect not unlike the cartooned Roger and Jessica Rabbit afoot in a live-action Los Angeles. There are not, however, many such characters this time out, and there is no room among them for Leigh's wife, Alison Steadman -- a big disappointment all by itself. The dominant, even domineering one is created by David Thewlis, a nastier version of the compulsive jokester he played in Leigh's The Short and Curlies. This character is undeniably, and a little overwhelmingly, quick-witted and witty. And through his thrashing, lashing one-liners ("Thanks for the mammaries," "I'm puttin' the fun back in fundament," etc.) and his bubbling fount of trivial and doubtful facts ("Wherever you are in London, you're only thirty feet from a rat"), he constructs a portrait of wasted talent and energy that no doubt has, or is intended to have, larger implications for present-day British society. At some point, though, and not really all that far down the line, the law of diminishing returns comes in. The movie has nowhere to go with its protagonist, except into monotony. (Those repetitive runs on a harp on the soundtrack are no help.) Presumably that's the whole point, or at least part of the point; but two hours and ten minutes, or thereabouts, is too long to spend in the company of so rudderless and motor-mouthed a character. Katrin Cartlidge, Greg Crutwell. (1993) — Duncan Shepherd
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