November 6, 2006
We English love a loser. And in the new Brit-comedy Sixty Six, our one-time big win plays backdrop to a bittersweet coming of age comedy, as a boy’s bar mitzvah clashes with the 1966 World Cup Final. Based on director Paul Weiland’s own experience – a ‘true-ish story’ – Sixty Six pinpoints the tragic-comic growing pains of young Bernie Reubens (Gregg Sulkin) whose dreams of finally being centre stage are thwarted by the family purse strings and England’s unexpected passage to the Final.
Coming from the stables that brought us About A Boy, Sixty Six is – appropriately – about a boy. Two boys really – young Bernie and his obsessive-compulsive-disorder suffering dad, Mannie (Eddie Marsan). Both are in the shadow of their more popular brothers, misfits in a world that ignores them. Mannie shares a failing grocery business with his younger sibling and is knocked for six when a supermarket opens next door. And Bernie – asthmatic, never picked at football, left behind at the beach by his parents – sees his bar mitzvah as the big-day event to change his life. And if he has to voodoo-doll the England squad to stop them getting to the Final and ruining his day, so be it.
Newcomer Sulkin excels as Bernie, and the ever-excellent Eddie Marsan pitches it perfectly as Mannie. The under-appreciated Helena Bonham Carter does fine work as the wife and mother trying to keep the family together, supporting her husband's ticks, quirks and demeanour with a care-worn love that really rings true. Not easy when hubby insists on eating in his underwear – for fear of spills – and must revisit a switched-off gas fire several times to check it's out.
With a gallery of supporting parts – Catherine Tate as the can’t-cook Auntie, Stephen Rea as the kindly, cuckolded doctor – and colourful Jewish characters (not caricatures), Sixty Six has a texture and tone you can lose yourself in. Weaving in footage of the ’66 footie world cup, Bernie’s disasters are contrasted with the winning-against-the-odds ways of the English team. Growing up means facing up – to who you are and how things are – and director Weiland makes his point, peppering the film with piquant moments as the adult world bursts in to Bernie’s dreams. But when the film veers full-tilt towards an appropriate feel-good finale you’d want nothing less: Sixty Six conjures up characters you can believe in and want to spend time with.
Marsan and Bonham Carter are adept at comedy but also give the film an emotional punchiness – their dawning realisation of how they’ve treated their boy, and each other, is genuinely affecting. And with standout comic moments – the dog-on-the-car is worth the price of admission – Sixty Six adds up to a small-scale, nostalgic, crowd-pleaser of a film. No losers here.
Coming from the stables that brought us About A Boy, Sixty Six is – appropriately – about a boy. Two boys really – young Bernie and his obsessive-compulsive-disorder suffering dad, Mannie (Eddie Marsan). Both are in the shadow of their more popular brothers, misfits in a world that ignores them. Mannie shares a failing grocery business with his younger sibling and is knocked for six when a supermarket opens next door. And Bernie – asthmatic, never picked at football, left behind at the beach by his parents – sees his bar mitzvah as the big-day event to change his life. And if he has to voodoo-doll the England squad to stop them getting to the Final and ruining his day, so be it.
Newcomer Sulkin excels as Bernie, and the ever-excellent Eddie Marsan pitches it perfectly as Mannie. The under-appreciated Helena Bonham Carter does fine work as the wife and mother trying to keep the family together, supporting her husband's ticks, quirks and demeanour with a care-worn love that really rings true. Not easy when hubby insists on eating in his underwear – for fear of spills – and must revisit a switched-off gas fire several times to check it's out.
With a gallery of supporting parts – Catherine Tate as the can’t-cook Auntie, Stephen Rea as the kindly, cuckolded doctor – and colourful Jewish characters (not caricatures), Sixty Six has a texture and tone you can lose yourself in. Weaving in footage of the ’66 footie world cup, Bernie’s disasters are contrasted with the winning-against-the-odds ways of the English team. Growing up means facing up – to who you are and how things are – and director Weiland makes his point, peppering the film with piquant moments as the adult world bursts in to Bernie’s dreams. But when the film veers full-tilt towards an appropriate feel-good finale you’d want nothing less: Sixty Six conjures up characters you can believe in and want to spend time with.
Marsan and Bonham Carter are adept at comedy but also give the film an emotional punchiness – their dawning realisation of how they’ve treated their boy, and each other, is genuinely affecting. And with standout comic moments – the dog-on-the-car is worth the price of admission – Sixty Six adds up to a small-scale, nostalgic, crowd-pleaser of a film. No losers here.