Small Time

This small (and I use the word advisedly) has been reviewed on IMDb as though it were the second coming. Believe me it most definitely is not. Maybe Meadows intention was to display council estate stereotypes in an amateurish way but he certainly managed it in spades. The acting is not much above the level of Am-dram though it is not awful, the script such as it is seems improvised. I am sure that Meadows knows people like this but I do not. Why do the characters all wear really bad wigs?Why does every other word have to be F***? Why is there no story? It works on the level of an average student film but no better than that. After all I had heard and read about Shane Meadow's "genius" I was expecting so much more than was actually delivered. He fancies himself as Mike Leigh,perhaps, if so,he falls an awful long way short.

i watched this film at college and at the time i had never heard of shane meadows. since i watched this film i have become a huge fan of all his films. this man is the future of british cinema and is what the industry has needed. the film itself is very realistic in parts and is cast very well too. the script is brilliant and i found it inspirational as a way to write down to earth comedies with drama added on to it. hopefully this film is the way that meadows wants to go on and it seems that it will be from films such as room for romeo brass and 24/7.

Glorious mini-feature from the extraordinary Shane Meadows, which shows up the amiable, timid amateurishness of LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS for what it is. It has been the stated aim of directors like Scorcese and Tarantino to demythologise the gangster, to expose him as a mundane, pathetic human being, but it never works. Maybe the style is too vivid, maybe the iconography is too strong, but the gangsters in GOODFELLAS or PULP FICTION are vibrant, vital, even likeable, motors of these films, and it is their wit and inventive opportunism we remember, not their sticky ends.

British cinema has had an easier time in deglamorising its gangsters, probably because the Krays et al are not very glamorous in the first place. They're seedy, brutal, unstylish, stupid, resolutely unexotic (US gangsters are generally Italian, a compelling, operatic founding myth to start with). Very often British films go the opposite direction, creating relentless narratives of grim, unloveable violence.

SMALLTIME doesn't take either tack. Like Olivier Assayas, Meadows 'just' films a group of ordinary people as they live, people like those you probably know, or might even be yourself. They're just a bunch of lads, living on their wits, mucking about, having a laugh, drinking, talking (not in the impossibly clever manner of Tarantino characters), brawling, having problems with their girlfriends. This could be anyone from a certain strata in British society: they just happen to be petty criminals.

Petty is certainly the word. Much of the comedy comes from the very 'small time' nature of their activities. These are not the meticulously planned heists of US cinema: in one hilarious scene, they try to steal dog food, are confronted with an unexpected and bewildering array of choice, and not realising that they don't have to climb over a back-wall door to get the stuff; in another, they actually rob a car-boot sale! The main 'heist' is a sublimely bungled attack on a massage parlour, just because its owner made fun of the Begbie-style psycho, Jumbo.

Actually, it's that scene, where Jumbo's childhood friend, a wonderfully weak-willed Paul Calf-alike, who is being constantly harrassed by his girlfriend to leave his wideboy mates, and goes with her to this masseur's house, that is the film's triumph, a masterpiece of Mike Leigh social comedy. What begins as exquisite awkwardness develops into a hilarious massage between the two men, a genuinely burgeoning relationship, and ends with a hurt Jumbo intruding, betrayed, aggressive, humiliated by the masseur.

For all its comedy, the film is a dark work, and Meadows doesn't flinch from showing the casual brutality of this world, especially in the character of Jumbo, played by the director himself. For all his macho bravado, he can't satisfy his missus, who resorts to (very funny) furtive engagements with a vibrator. His aggression begins as comic, and ends in disturbing (though unseen) violence, and it is his focal presence that prevents the film from slipping into mere patronising observation.

This doesn't mean that SMALLTIME is filmed with boring, typically British, naturalism. The casual, seemingly improvisatory air conceals style which is revelatory and supremely controlled - highly stylised, bringing out through colour and odd composition, the genuinely surreal in everyday life; cool, remote, often in long-shot, allowing for critical distance (close-ups are rare); but also, through editing and handheld camera, giving a real sense of being in the thick of the action, sharing the characters' highs and lows.

It's a good feeling when you 'discover' a great film. Especially one that due to the nature of it's budget and distribution, only you and a handful of other lucky people will ever see. Those were my thoughts after watching 'Small Time'. Costing only a couple of grand to make, and filmed on the streets of Nottingham, it follows the daily ups and downs, mainly downs, of a group of friends scraping a day-by-day living by ducking and diving and stealing anything to hand. The story leads to a grand finale, but it's the interaction and the banter between the characters that makes this film such a fun ride, they are totally believeable. The cast are mainly unknowns, but thats what probably makes the chemistry work. The music is good as well, two accoustic guitar tunes near the middle of the film are fantastic, they sum up totally how the characters are really feeling. Buy it and cherish it, Hollywood can keep all it's 'eye candy', this is proper film making.

The other reviews amaze me. Didn't they see the terrible wigs and hammy local college of performing arts acting. The characters appear to have been purchased as a past-their use-by date job lot from Stereotypes-R-Us. Harry Enfields scouser family, appearing on TV around the time this was made, are actually MORE believable as real people. This is partly due to the hideous legacy that is British DRAMA ACTING. From the days of Laurence Olivier right through to the BBC dramas of today there is the received wisdom of the correct way to act. The acting in this film is like watching performing arts students having their first go at trying on wigs and costumes in order to portray the poor but resilient folk of the forgotten council estate. It would appear that the script, too, was written by the council. Maybe the whole film was a council film. It certainly looked and felt like it. Like others, I enjoyed This Is England, which is the nearest Meadows has got to being a shadow of Ken Loach, and Dead Man's Shoes had some good moments (but a stupid ending). However, this, admittedly early, effort is poor and doesn't deserve the good reviews given by the few people who were brave enough to sit through the whole thing. This is not the worst ever use of a BFI grant but it is among the worst portrayals of life on a council estate that relies heavily on wigs and stereotypes.