Perfect cast and a good story

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Mike Leigh gold. This small-scale film might look like an average suburban character drama but it's far too rich. The rough trajectory sees the easy-going couple weathering a social whirl of oddballs trying and invariably failing to make something happen in their uneventful life. It's a soap opera without the melodrama.So to the performances which are all world-class, no joke. Easiest to overlook is the sublime Claire Skinner as Natalie, an apprentice plumber enduring nervous taunts about her sexuality. Off in the corner of the sitting room is the Gollum-like Nicola, an anti-Natalie who manages to find the comic light in an otherwise grotesquely sybaritic relationship with bulimia and David Thewlis. Timothy Spall creates the most pathetic individual I can remember in a film and consequently a man whose failure may turn out to be his greatest achievement. Bizarre but rewarding. 7/10

Just one of those films that is subjectively sublime. Honestly portrayed people just doing stuff and some of it going wrong and some of it going OK. Not sneering but celebrating a certain way of life, and so becoming a celebration of all our lives - maybe this borders into objectivity?Funny and joyful - with what could pass as tragedy, but still funny. Plenty of the inter-personal stuff that is so often missed in pursuit of consensus cinema. The actors just appear like people that are just there - not acting but just doing things. Reminded me of crying with laughter after getting caught putting dog-dirt (maybe not familiar with that term?) in my Grandad's petrol tank on the estate - kind of thing - like I say - subjective.

A sublime slice of ordinary life from Mike Leigh. He takes us through 5 days in the life of a London family: Jim Broadbent, Alison Steadman and their twin daughters Claire Skinner and Jane Horrox. What follows is by turns touching, hilarious and unsettling. Leigh is often compared to Ken Loach, but Loach deals with unspeakably grim and often melodramatic scenarios. The far more impressive gift of Leigh is to make tales from the apparently unremarkable. So many touches run true here; Steadman doing a little dance to herself alone in the kitchen, Broadbent and Stephen Rea drunkenly reciting the Spurs Double side, Skinner describing an arthritic old woman met on her plumbing round. And the tragedy of the film is also unveiled naturally and feels horribly believable.The performances are also astonishing. Broadbent and Steadman, both distinctive actors, can descend into parody but here are just hugely enjoyable. Skinner is nicely deadpan but the star is Horrox, playing a twitching wreck of a girl who mainly communicates in one word insults. Little wonder she's been given so many chances to prove her talents subsequently, just a shame she's never taken them. The only false note is Tim Spall as a manic chef. Perhaps that's because he's simply put in for comic value (he was far better in Leigh's 'Secrets and Lies'), his character given none of the depth which lights up the rest of the film.

Whoever wrote the late review missed the boat on this one - 'another boring film from mike leigh', 'i can tell you no such dialog ever did, or ever would take place' - rubbish! This is a very real, moving film. Don't let the plot premise put you off - life in the day of 'typical' english, dysfunctional family of four - the characters develop at slow-burning pace while we watch on at fly-on-the-wall distance. Alison Steadman's character in particular. I initially judged her as a rather silly woman who would giggle at anything, but as the film progresses you see how good a mother she really is, what she does for her children, how she has made sacrifices for them and communicates with them. If people have seen this as a negative film, I hope they reconsider, as, for me, it shows how life is sweet, despite of and because of all the dysfunction of the family.