Μύ So much British comedy is anchored in class. It is acutely important to the chippy, working-class Terry in The Likely Lads, Harold in Steptoe and Son, and the bent-double-with-grovelling Basil Fawlty. To name but a few. So it's not surprising that first-time cinema writer-director Tony Grounds has opted for a simple, tragi-comic tale of haves and have-nots.
Lee Evans plays Robert, a married, badly dressed dreamer who feels heaven will be his and his family's if he can win a newspaper competition. He puts his abundant energy into entering them rather than finding a job. Happily ignoring the odds against winning, he resents a nicely-mannered middle-class family (led by Frank Finlay) when they win a holiday he sees as his. He then abuses the newspaper editor with a volley of vulgarity and holds the winning couple hostage in their own home, leaving reality well behind.
Evans is a gifted enough actor to let Robert's seething anger suddenly burst through the boyish innocence and easy charm, and the film is at its strongest when his character is unravelled piece by piece. Once that is over, the film struggles to survive on a fairly mechanical plot and only lives again when intensity and sadness threaten to submerge the hapless anti-hero. The director does, however, have an eye and ear not only for the nuances of British class but also for meaningful oddity.
Read what Andrew Collins had to say on marketing "The Martins".
