Once Upon a Time in the Midlands: Critic Reviews

In moments when things don't so much happen as unfurl ... and any time the wonderful Kathy Burke, the antidote to cutification, is on screen -- Meadows honestly conveys the feeling of home on the Midlands range.

It has a generosity toward all of its characters that would give any film an endearing lightheartedness.

A little tedious to sit through.

Always predictable in its outcome, but it still retains a certain charm.

A spotty yet ingratiating working-class farce that suggests a Mike Leigh movie with opera buffa tendencies.

Henderson of the velvet-and- helium voice makes a princess without rival.

As depicted without affection by director Shane Meadows, his screeching actors and his overzealous set designer, the area is a step below trailer-trash culture and the main activities are bingo, hurling insults and airing one's dirty laundry on TV.

Though Shirley is supposed to be torn between the passion of her younger days and the tender yet boring Dek, there seems to be little chemistry between her and Jimmy.

Once Upon a Time in the Midlands is all over the place.

Evokes the atmosphere of a Sergio Leone Western, sneaking up under the movie's human comedy and adding a smile.

Meadows clearly has a flair for working with actors and for depicting the rough-and-tumble of ordinary provincial lives. If he could go just a bit deeper, the truly great Midlands movie just might surface.

The movie is so busy being quirky that it's hard to relate to it.

Some strong performances make it go by fairly painlessly, but inconsistencies involving plot and character keep it from ever being more than marginally involving.

Ifans' sniveling strains our sympathies, but the supporting cast is terrific.

The family dynamics are intriguing, and the performances mildly diverting.

A movie that just barely avoids sickening sentimentality with its sudden swerves into anarchic comedy.

Meadows has complained that financial backers forced him to cut a third of his Midlands script. The suspicion persists that he cut the wrong third.

A peculiar and unsatisfying attempt to fuse Meadows' edgy, documentary instincts and his (and his financiers') desire for an art-house U.S. hit on the order of The Full Monty.

It smartly delineates the hard choices that people without many options must make, and its treatment of their conflicted situations is respectful but highly comic.

It's a compelling and ambitious idea, but one that misfires because of its underwhelming characters and slack storytelling.

Like a Mike Leigh film on steroids, situations don't dawn slowly on these characters, they come crashing down on their heads.