Eric Cantona

From director Ken Loach, England's longtime disciple of social realism, comes his most audience-friendly picture yet.

With "Looking for Eric," it helps if your non-filmic interests include what the English call football.

But all this odd but endearing comedy-drama requires, really, is a willingness to ride along with some pretty extreme narrative mood swings, and to deal with some regionally specific bits germane to the story's setting.

I don't know about you, but I like films that don't worry unduly about whether a mass audience will catch every reference. (I missed a hundred verbal details in the British political satire "In the Loop," but I'm still laughing over the stuff I did get.)

The Eric of the title is Eric Cantona, the Manchester United legend who retired from soccer in 1997 to paint, play music, study philosophy and dabble in film. He plays himself in Loach's inspirational fairy tale, written by Scottish screenwriter Paul Laverty.

That's the un-Loachian aspect; the main line of the film is more familiar.

Falling apart in middle age, a Manchester postal worker (Steve Evets) can't forgive himself for the dissolution of his second marriage. Dealing with depression and panic attacks, he's trying to keep his stepsons out of trouble. An amateur group therapy session with the postman and his mates leads to the question: Whom do you most look up to as a role model? For our hero it's Cantona, who soon thereafter appears to him, magically, as a spiritual guide, personal trainer and lonely-hearts advice dispenser, nudging the postman back into the orbit of his ex and in touch with his youthful best.

Screenwriter Laverty hauls in some local thugs to threaten the stepson's lives, and this contrived plot development undermines (without killing) what's best about "Looking for Eric." Crucial to a film such as this, the hang-out factor -- the enjoyment provided by the loose, funny pub sequences, for example -- is extremely high. Evets leads a lovely cast. Loach can't resolve this picture's contradictory impulses, but he has made the most entertaining sports film in a while. And I didn't know Cantona from a can of gray English peas.

 

     RSS

 

"Looking for Eric" Movie Trailer

 

more MOVIE REVIEWS ...

Recent Movie Reviews - Films in Theaters

 

more MOVIE REVIEWS ...

Recent Movie Reviews - Films in Theaters

 

Kristen Wiig and Will Forte in MacGruber

MacGruber
Kristen Wiig & Will Forte in MacGruber

'MacGruber' summons up memories of mullets, 'MacGyver' and Mike Myers. A blood-spattered, hit-or-miss character comedy of the 'Wayne's World'/'Austin Powers' school, it manages to be nostalgic and profane in equal measures, retro and yet retrofitted to suit the new cutting edge in screen farce

 

Mother and Child

Mother and Child
Annette Bening & Naomi Watts in Mother and Child

Writer-director Rodrigo Garcia's new film interlaces three L.A. stories. Annette Bening plays a physical therapist who long ago gave up a daughter in a closed-adoption scenario. That baby has grown up to be a fearsome attorney (Naomi Watts), who's hired by a senior law-firm partner (Samuel L. Jackson) and is sleeping with him

 

Shrek Forever After

Shrek Forever After
Mike Myers & Cameron Diaz in Shrek Forever After

Dreamworks seems bored with the ogre who laid the golden egg. Shrek Forever After, the fourth film in the lucrative franchise, barely tampers with the Shrek formula (one-liners, flatulence jokes, pop tunes) and not enough to breathe life into the exhausted series. Shrek, feeling buried under the celebrity and the diapers, makes an unwise trade with a wizard named Rumpelstiltskin

 

 

No MPAA rating.

Running time: 1:57.

Cast: Steve Evets (Eric Bishop); John Henshaw (Meatballs); Stephanie Bishop (Lily); Lucy-Jo Hudson (Sam); Eric Cantona (himself).

Credits: Directed by Ken Loach; written by Paul Laverty; produced by Rebecca O'Brien. An IFC Films release.