Rita, Sue and Bob Too

I hated the 1980s when I lived through them, but looking back from a distance, it's easier to make sense of them. Rita, Sue and Bob Too is an exemplary British '80s film. It's not very pretty - Rita and Sue are two giggling teenage girls, all decked out in white - from their stilletos to the highlights in Sue's hair. They live on a sink-hole council estate in Bradford. Bob is "middle-class" in that he lives in sterile private housing - all nice lawns and open spaces. But Bob drops his "h"s too, and wears a gold chain.

The three begin a "relationship" which is based on sex. None of the characters are represented as particularly nice, but instead they're "real". I knew a lot of Ritas and Sues when I was growing up, and the two young actresses who play these parts do a stellar job.

For me, a lot of the humour in the film derives from the depictions of "class" - from Sue's awful drunk father uselessly brandishing a baseball bat, to Bob's wife - clearly only about half a stilleto heel up the social ladder than Rita and Sue, but desperate to be seen to be something better. Her acting is stilted, laughable, awful. But it's supposed to be - the character is acting at being posh - badly. Lines like "Make your own f**king tea" when she's trying to impress and intimidate the girls are wonderfully comic.

I also like the racial slant to the film - the guy who plays Sue's Asian boyfriend is attractive, and presented both sympathetically and unsympathetically at the same time (like most of the lead characters in the film) - at first he's nervous around Sue, but quickly tries to assert control over her. When Sue drops him, he's pathetic again, but this too is only a ruse. I think this film paved the way for later films like "East is East", which reminds me of it a lot.

I also like the depictions of gossipy, interfering neighbours - both from the under-class estate (especially the strange old man who dances in glee at the "street-fight") and the middle-class private housing (the guy who endlessly waters his plants in the garden so he can spy on the events in Bob's house). One of my favourite sequences is when Bob's wife's friend comes to tell her that she's seen Bob with the girls. Her fakey "concern" is shown - not by speech, but by the fact that she is half running to the house: she can't WAIT to tell her news and ruin the relationship. All of this is so cleverly and wittily observed, in a completly understated way.

This is a brilliant film. Put it on your "must-see" list.

British playwright Andrea Dunbar combined two of her stage plays to create the movie script for Rita, Sue and Bob Too, a movie which, in my family at least, is somewhat fondly remembered as a naughty and gleefully foul-mouthed comedy about an older, married man who starts a sexually-charged relationship with two schoolgirls who babysit his children. 30 years on, the subject matter could be slightly troubling, and it just may be exactly that for some people seeing it for the first time. Yet with the tagline "Thatcher's Britain with her knickers down!" and the socially aware Alan Clarke at the helm, it's clear that the film is much more than a titillating throwback to the Carry On days, and paints an incredibly grim picture of working-class life in Bradford, and of Britain as a whole.

Rita (Downton Abbey's Siobhan Finneran) and Sue (Michelle Holmes) are two bubbly and outgoing girls making some extra cash on the side by babysitting for middle-class couple Bob (George Cositgan) and Michelle (Lesley Sharp). While driving the girls home one night, Bob takes a detour to the moors where he proceeds to have sex with both of them, one after the other. The threesome start a potentially damaging relationship, with the girls having to deal with a troubled home- life and the pressures of school gossip, and Bob coming under scrutiny from his wife, who he has cheated on many times before. As Bob and Rita grow closer and Sue finds herself in an abusive relationship with young Pakistani Aslam (Kulvinder Ghir), close bonds are broken and lives are ruined, when all Bob really wants is to get his rocks off.

It is a film that would never get made nowadays, but Clarke's film never attempts to make any stance on the morality of the characters' actions. For a guy who sounds like a complete scumbag on paper, Bob is a surprisingly likable, if obviously flawed, chap. Rita and Sue are so loud, abrasive and willing to participate in the bizarre three-way that they it's impossible to view them as victims. The picture painted by Dunbar and Clarke of a crumbling Britain in the grip of austerity suggests that the central characters are acting out of boredom and to escape the banality of their suffocating environment. It is a socioeconomic drama cleverly disguised as an old-fashioned sex farce, and succeeds in being socially observant and laugh-out-loud funny. The introduction to Sue's frenetic home- life is a mixture of amusing one-liners and kitchen-sink angst, and this lopsided tone is consistent throughout the rest of the film. With its lack of ethical judgement amidst such a potentially creepy subject matter, Rita, Sue and Bob Too with unsettle some but delight others.

It's not Hugh Grant in some over priced London suburb falling in love with hilarious results, It's not angry young men fighting against an unfair class system, it's not about forbidden homosexual partnerships or a mixing of Indian and British culture. This film shows a snap shot of British working class life as it was (and still is in many cases!). The British film industry's Liberal Elite hate this kind of movie as it attempts to show real people. Not every working class person has a chip on there shoulder! It's packed full of swearing and sex and even a little bit of violence. If you are easily offended don't watch, but if you fancy a realistic Brit flick that doesn't have Hugh Grant in it, then see this.

This film really should be used in schools as a realistic portrayal of English life in the eighties.

There are some literally side splittingly funny scenes in this film. The most memorable are those of Sue's alcoholic Dad and his antics. I don't know if the director was meaning to show him as being really funny but some of the things he comes out with are absolutely brilliant.

My favourite moment is when Sue gets back from baby sitting the first time. His quote "cos there's nowt opp-en! That's how!" is brilliant.

Watch this film, it will make you laugh out loud.

.. talk like that and I'd get a belt .. hello 1980s how I've missed you. Before everyone gets up in arms about the smooth talking Bob and his two girls - these two girls at time of filming were both in their 20s!

This for me when I was watching back in 1987 was the closest we could get to porn. No internet porn. No adult channels. Only porn videos you could get from some dodgy fella at work. So this was it. We were having a gang bang. Having a born. A bit of a three some one the moors with the horn honking and smooth Bob telling you to shift your bum up whilst he prepared to go again with Rita.

Be prepared for some language no longer allowed now a days that was used to described the corner shop way back when and just take the film with a pinch of salt. Get stuck in there!