Brydon flails around in the shallow end

Starring : Rob Brydon, Charlotte Riley, Rupert Graves, Thomas Turgoose, Jane Horrocks. Pooled resources very shallow IF there is one genre that needs to be boated and pushed out to sea, it is the empoweredby-embarrassment comedy.

These mirth-from-midlifecrises affairs — most of ’em British, for some reason — hark all the way back to longago hits such as The Full Monty and Calendar Girls. Many of the gags date back to the Stone Age.

The latest, lamentable addition to the fold is Swimming With Men, the sappy story of a depressed accountant who reverses all negative entries on the balance sheet of life when he joins a synchronised swimming team for middle-aged men.

Much of the humour stems from dad-bodded dudes in Speedos cracking dad-jokes (“What goes in the pool, stays in the pool”) while performing routines meant to be handled by younger, slimmer women.

Rob Brydon (best known as one half of The Trip team with Steve Coogan) is the numbercruncher leading his paunchy mates towards a date with destiny at a competition final.

Brydon has been an underrated conveyance for much of his career, and he usually finds a way to craft a character that can draw you in to a situation with ease. Unfortunately, he blows it big-time here, pushing away viewers with a whiny, sad sack of a fella you kind of wish had never learnt to swim in the first place.

Charlotte Riley co-stars as the younger, slimmer woman trying to whip this lovehandled lot into shape. Everyone else? They’re just like you . . . treading water until the end credits roll.