Mike Bassett: England Manager 2001 by AverageMansReviews

Mike Bassett: England Manager 2001 by AverageMansReviews

Review Time

Warning: there will be flashing effects/colourful effects/rainbow community element/medical/references to race and/or bigotry

England's Manager for the 2002 World Cup is: briefly; Mike Bassett [Ricky Tomlinson:] begins life in this movie as the Norwich City Manager, he takes the England job, he is a good man, but as a football manager this is possibly one step too far for him as he is completely out of the depths, alongside Dave 'Doddsy' Dodds [Bradley Walsh:] Bassett's/England first team coach that repeats or flat land agrees with his governor; yes he does that kind of shtick and Martin Bashir [Martin Bashir:] as himself he provides narration to this mockumentary movie and interviews Bassett and others at some points as well: important addition; I said to myself if I included Bashir in this content I would also make it known that Bashir is now a disgraced interviewer for his breeches of rules as it relates to his legendary and infamous interview with Princess Diana for Panorama in 1995.

Generally speaking: the storyline/script is as I have already referenced this mockumentary movie, with exposition character developments and the framework and pacing of this 89 minutes film is good

Art, action and comedy; we get football graphics [commonly used on any team sport; to set up and talk about the formation and personnel that kind of thing,] we have split-screen into small squares to try and incorporate the sense of occasion or Bassett has to sell what is happening at this specific time when we are looking at just at him for cues on what is happening, obviously the action is the football and for a little taste of the comedy which I do have a wide sense of humour and in-depth too, I did find it a little bit too dry for me. But for one example of that is where this match didn't go too well for England so Bassett indicates something to the effect of making genuine points of criticism; so this is what two England football fans do; they give genuine and well constructed criticism about their team and were then maybe a second or two; the viewing audience can see Bassett go by his body language and mannerisms; actually that is fair criticism.

Character developments and performances; let's be completely honest here and say; what with the character developments being a paint by numbers version of what they were clearly going for here, mixed with broadly speaking solid performances throughout the cast and Tomlinson and/or Walsh having good chemistry as well; at minimum solid work is what we have here.

This film receives: 5/10, this film is mixed; it is a solid film for what it is, I just find like I have already said the comedy a bit dry, a bit too dry for me, there are ongoing extra bits and pieces underneath the ending credits and finally this film also has 1 Nominee to its name; Empire Awards, UK 2002 Empire Award Best British Film