00:00 An unlikely hero who hailed from football's lower leagues
00:04 and in their desperate hour of need, answered his nation's call.
00:08 ..new manager to take us into the World Cup.
00:10 Mike Bassett, England manager, is a film from 2001.
00:13 It's a mockumentary comedy sports film about a football manager
00:17 called Mike Bassett who gets a job managing the England squad.
00:21 Yeah, so I chose this one.
00:22 I chose this one for a few reasons, really,
00:24 but let's take a quick look at the scores before I tell you.
00:26 So, at the time of recording on IMDb, it gets 6.8 out of 10.
00:31 The audience over on Rotten Tomatoes give it 76%
00:34 and the critics on Rotten Tomatoes give it 40%,
00:37 which averages out around 61%.
00:40 So I think this is quite underrated based on that score.
00:43 I particularly think the critics are quite harsh on it.
00:46 And I was interested to know, a little bit of an experiment, really,
00:49 I was interested to know, can you like this film
00:52 or can you get a lot out of this film
00:54 if you have no interest in football?
00:56 Had you seen it before? And if not, what did you think?
00:59 I hadn't seen it before, but it was a bit on my radar.
01:02 So, as I've mentioned to you previously,
01:03 the men in my family are football obsessed.
01:07 So this was definitely one that I was aware of.
01:09 I do certainly think that if you are a fan of British football,
01:12 there is a lot in this for you
01:14 and the jokes probably hit a lot harder.
01:16 But as a passive fan,
01:17 there was quite a lot for me to enjoy in there as well.
01:19 So I really liked the way they utilised the mockumentary style.
01:23 And this was all used really effectively
01:24 to create quite a lot of the comedy in the film, I thought.
01:27 There were some great moments of physical comedy in this.
01:29 Ricky Tomlinson is obviously doing a lot in this film.
01:32 And some of my favourite moments
01:34 were when the camera is watching him watching the game
01:37 and he's having these really huge over-the-top reactions
01:40 where he's wincing because his players are playing badly
01:42 and things just aren't going well.
01:44 And a lot of the scenes and a lot of the dialogue,
01:46 a lot of the script, it all felt quite familiar
01:48 and like things you would actually hear
01:50 people who work in football say.
01:52 An old-fashioned manager and the players simple.
01:54 Four, four, two, three, five, one, one.
01:57 Three, one, two, one, two, one for me.
02:00 There's probably no doubt that liking football
02:03 really enriches the comedy in this film for you.
02:06 It's a really good parody of things like the way footballers
02:08 and managers talk after the game.
02:10 It makes a lot of good points about the way the press treat football
02:13 and football managers and the England team, stuff like that.
02:15 There's bits in it, particularly towards the end,
02:17 where you're seeing how all the stress
02:19 and how all the pressure has really got to Mike.
02:21 And I think that he does a really good job
02:23 of making it feel likeable and relatable
02:26 and you want to see him succeed.
02:28 I did note that a lot of the jokes in this are self-contained gags.
02:32 They aren't things that propel the story along.
02:34 They don't really develop the characters at all.
02:37 So it feels a lot like the gags were written separate of the film
02:40 and then just kind of shoehorned in there.
02:42 I also don't think that you would enjoy this film as much
02:46 if you weren't a football fan.
02:48 Looking at those scores then, I'm interested to know,
02:51 is 6 out of 10, 61%, that sort of area,
02:54 is it harsh? Is it underrated? What do you think?
02:57 I think with the right audience and the fact that it is just quite
03:00 a well-made film, that those scores are a little bit underrated.
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