4 stars****

Nick Horby’s ‘Fever Pitch’ had set the previous high mark for a serious football film; now Looking For Eric has beaten it hands down and we’re looking at the new number one.

Paul Laverty was written an excellent screenplay (I’ve just ordered my copy to study it more closely) that conveys a diverse selection:

• The life and relationships of a local postman and his co-workers
• The football fan’s view of Eric Cantona as a king of football
• The troubles a sixteen year old can get addicted to, in today’s lifestyle

What’s it about?

Eric Bishop is a football fanatic postman whose life is descending into crisis. Looking after his granddaughter is bringing him into contact with his ex-wife, Lily, who he abandoned after the birth of their child. At the same time, his son Ryan is hiding a gun under the floorboards of his bedroom for a gangster. At his weakest moments Bishop considers suicide. But after a short meditation session with fellow postmen in his room, hallucinations bring forth visits from his footballing hero, the famously philosophical Eric Cantona, who gives him advice. His relationship with Lily improves dramatically. Then Bishop brings the gun to the gangster, but is forced to keep it himself when a Rottweiler is set on him in his car. Eric Cantona advises Bishop to talk to his friends and to ‘surpise’ himself. Bishop organises ‘Operation Cantona’, sneaking in dozens of fellow Manchester United fans into the gangster’s house and humiliating them, threatening to put the video of their operation onto Youtube.

Eric Cantona was the superstar footballer who brought an athletic grace and grand entertainment to his Manchester United playing days, which coincided with their best performances for twenty five years, helping them gain trophy after trophy. He shone at a time he was surrounded by stars and introduced the club (and the world’s most successful manager, Sir Alex Ferguson) to improved training methods which brought instant success. The fans called him The King and still sing his name at the Old Trafford stadium twelve years later.

To cap it all, the acting by the Frenchman is excellent showing how he’s set another quality movie on to his CV.

Ken Loach, as director, has magnificently put across the mix and match of a hero, a set of workers who can’t afford to go and see their local team anymore and a brand of loyalty that exists not just among the team’s supporters, but among the team of workers at the post office, in this example. Loach shows us that if we act together, we are stronger than performing alone.

As a certain frenchman says, “He who is afraid to throw the dice, will never throw a six.” This certainly mirrors how Eric Cantona was seen in his Manchester United days. David Beckham still talks proudly about Cantona’s influence.

A change of director and the loss of the brilliance of writing team Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais proved the franchise didn’t learn from Goal 1. To have the player move to Real Madrid in Spain, where his long lost mother just happens to live, is stretching believability too far.

The mistakes still abound. There’s no recognition of the Gavin Harris character moving to Real Madrid, especially when he looked all through with his previous club and heading downwards in his career, rather than on a high. The lead actor and Anna Friel got engaged, but without mentioning it. You’d think the plan to leave out these matters would leave a movie with a crisp screenplay. Alas, still every cliché you’ve forgotten comes back into play.

The good news is that the brilliant football footage still shines through. The games look so realistic that you do believe the actors played at Real Madrid’s stadium. You’ll just to put up with players running with the ball, but you either only see the feet with the ball or the body moving without the feet or ball. You can’t have it both ways unless you’re a professional footballer who becomes an actor. Apart from Eric Cantona and Vinne Jones, the list grows short.

The Blake Snyder action plan for a successful Hollywood movie is still showing through, leaving your need for a sick bag or two, close at hand. The lines are so embarrassing that the German team manager looks like he’s going to run away each time he speaks.

This movie isn’t as good as the first, but it does move the story along through obvious highs and lows and leads us directly to the third in the set.

We all know the script by now, guessing it seconds before the actors say the lines. We even guessed that he wouldn’t run over his little unknown brother who runs out in front of a Ferrari doing around 100mph.

My goodness, in Goal 3 they’ll have him decide between representing his home countries of Mexico and The United States. He’ll choose Mexico and he’ll go on to score the winning goal in the World Cup final. In Goal 4, he’ll transfer to a team on the moon, win the first league championship there, break two legs and still play on for ninety minutes to score the winning goal against the Daleks. I know, it’ll never happen, but it did in Goal 1 and Goal 2.

2 stars **

So here’s what the directors and writers did; they sat around a large table with lots of movie industry (but not football) people. They spent hours writing down ideas on little pieces of paper. Each idea contained a scene or incident that ‘could’ happen during a movie about a boy that grows up finding out he has a great football talent. The ‘goal’ of the film is to get him to move from point A to Point Z where he’s a professional footballer, forgetting anything about character arc.

The vital move next was to add any football cliché you might conjure up to any real life cliché you could imagine of a boy moving from a poor environment to a very rich one. Finally, you need to blend in all of the standard Hollywood movie plans to ensure that Blake Snyder’s laws of screenwriting for Hollywood hits, was applied.

Any normal team would now sift through the pile of ideas and place together a plan for the movie, discarding papers that won’t fit and reducing the plot to a manageable and believable script. Unfortunately, this team decided to keep everything in, lock stock and barrel.

I laughed so much when it wasn’t supposed to be a comedy and said ‘I don’t believe it’ so many times as we guessed this movie’s plot before each scene arrived. We were correct nearly every time in planning the film’s next move.

Incredibly, two of the four writers were the genius team of Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement. I can only guess they added the good parts of the script!

Taking a boy from the poor end of Mexico, breaking into the USA and then being spotted by a former scout from Newcastle United in England, failing his trial, but getting asked back for another trial before breaking through to the first team, would have been so much better if they’d talked to some football people. Perhaps they did, but they needed to get past basic errors. For example, you can’t sign a player that late in the season. With only four games to go and the need to win them all, you couldn’t add to your English Premier league squad past January. These games would be in mid April. You can’t just become an Agent to a player. FIFA (the governing body) UEFA and the English FA have strict rules about who can become an agent. Not anyone can and you can’t do it in an afternoon.

I could go on, but to avoid cliché movie reviews, I’ll say that the camera work, moving between the actors and the professional footballers, was excellent. You couldn’t see the breaks, it was so seamless. In this area, this film beats all previous football movies.

I felt sorry for the superb Anna Friel. You would have thought she’d have learnt about being the tag along wife after her spell with Nic Leeson, so a footballer is the next best bet. She must have looked at the script wondered if the lines were really expected to be read out loud. Then a quick look at her pay check would have convinced her to actually repeat the lines.

The Paul Gascoigne/ George Best character was a perfect foil to the clean, good living Mexican. Disaster was always only a few feet away. However, we all know that in movie-street, disaster is always followed by success.

I would guess David Beckham won’t be taking up acting after his small part in this movie, but his bank balance would have improved considerably.

Unbelievably, this is still one of the best football films of all time even though it’s two hours long, despite the plot, the clichés and the inevitable ending. I mean, apart from Manchester United, who scores incredible goals in the last few seconds to win matches?

There’s some people on the pitch, they think it’s all over… but no, Goal 2 and 3 will follow.

I thought I’d write a piece about the closing ceremony, which was excellent.

I thought I’d write a post about the wonderful British section, where they accepted the flag and then introduced not only David Beckham (world and interplanetary superstar whatever planet you’ve been on) and then Jimmy Page playing those riff chords to ‘Whole Lotta Love.’ The humour the Brits intend to use in 2012 was obvious already. I just loved the lollipop ladies (Google it if you don’t know) and the red London bus.

Then they fucked up.

I thought I’d use their 2012 London Olympic game logo here to promote the event. They won’t let you use it unless you pay them tons of money. So this is what it looks like if you don’t pay

I thought I’d use their video of the London (closing ceremony) segment available to watch on the BBC download section and the London 2012 Olympics website; except they won’t let you run it outside of the UK. So here’s what it looks like if you don‘t live in the UK

I expect it’s on YouTube somewhere, but I can’t be bothered to help anymore and it’s still four years away. I’ll fly over and get tickets for some of the events, but I may not mention it again.

Is that what they intended in the marketing department?