Looking for Eric: Review By harveycritic

LOOKING FOR ERIC

IFC Films

Reviewed for MovieWeb by Harvey Karten

Grade: B

Directed by: Ken Loach

Written By: Paul Laverty

Cast: Steve Evets, Eric Cantona, John Henshaw, Stephanie Bishop, Gerard Kearns, Lucy-Jo Hudson, Stefan Gumbs, Justin Moorhouse, Des Sharples, Greg Cook, Mick Ferry, Smug Roberts, Johnny Travis

Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 2/23/10

Opens: May 14, 2010

Michael Moore will make a movie turning Dick Cheney into a hero before you'll ever see Ken Loach succ*mbing to the siren call of Hollywood. Loach is a British socialist who turned down one of those knighthood offers during the 1970s for his contribution to film-stating that he has no use for the monarchy and for the exploitation done by his country in its name. As Bert Brecht is to theater, Loach is to the cinema: a man whose every move is motivated by his love for the working class and his hatred for the reactionary customs that keep people apart. His "Ae Fond Kiss" in 2004 finds a British citizen of Pakistani descent in love with a white Catholic schoolteacher, though his parents want to set him up with a beautiful Islamic woman.

"Looking for Eric" firmly has the Loach imprimatur. With a script by "Ae Fond Kiss"'s Paul Laverty, "Eric" is no call for revolution, nor does he treat the working class with the slightest condescension. But this is perhaps the director's most commercial movie yet, given its use of a famous French-born soccer star from the 1990s with archival scenes from his games and the romantic-comedy treatment of its principal character, who serves as the story's schlub-turned-winner.

What's more the romantic hero is not a twenty-something with a tale to excite a Sundance audience, but rather a man in his forties, a postal worker in Manchester who made a bad decision three decades ago and seeks to turn his life around. We're all looking for second chances, aren't we? Therein lies the movie's appeal.

Eric Bishop (Steve Evets) one day has a panic attack in his car, winding up in the hospital, his return home finding his place as chaotic as his mindset. Ryan (Gerard Kearns) and Jess (Stefan Gumbs), stepchildren from his second wife's previous marriage, treat him like the invisible man, nor can he get Lily (Stephanie Bishop), his first wife whom he left thirty years earlier, to even address him. His satisfactions come from his camaraderie with his fellow workers, especially Meatballs (John Henshaw), his life facing a real possibility of greater happiness when he conjures up an image of his hero, Eric Cantona (played by Cantona). The great English footballer of the nineties pops up now and then, taking over as Eric's social mentor.

Photographer Barry Ackroyd flashes back to the seventies when a teen Eric (Matthew McNulty) meets the adorable Lily (Laura Ainsworth) at a sock hop. As Cantona gently goads Eric into gaining the confidence to approach Lily (Stephanie Bishop) at the present time, they play off their tentative scenes with convincingly greater bravado. The last remaining problem in Eric's life is his lazy, contemptuous stepsons, Ryan (Gerard Kearns) ad Jess (Stefan Gumbs), who have involved themselves with a small crime syndicate . A gun, hidden under the floorboards, will lead to a major police action against both Eric and Lily and a crowd-pleasing scene involving a showdown between Eric & friends and two criminals who control Eric's stepsons.

One could argue that there's an excess of plot, that the teens living in the house at Eric's good will could have been saved as characters for a sequel, but Ken Loach handily mixes the pandemonium that climaxes the story with the tender and droll efforts of Eric and Lily at a reconciliation-as though the two are still teens with only the vaguest notions of how to deal with the opposite sex. The film is set completely in Manchester, the working-class accents a potential drawback to film-goers unaccustomed to non-American dialects, but overall the film has plenty of comic touches resulting from the turmoil within Eric's mind.

Unrated. 116 minutes. © 2010 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online