The Beautiful Game
HHH✩✩
ABRITISH comedy set around the Homeless World Cup seems pretty much a dead cert to bring home the feel-good. Thankfully, The Beautiful Game doesn’t balls it up.
Bill Nighy heads up the cast as Mal, irascible manager of England’s ragtag homeless football team. With eyes on England finally winning the Homeless World Cup (which is a real event, by the way) in Rome, Mal co-opts a remarkably talented new striker, Vinny (Top Boy’s Micheal Ward displaying impressive footy skills), on to their five-a-side squad. But can Vinny overcome his own mysterious, issues and learn that there’s no ‘I’ in team?
Directed by Thea Sharrock – whose jolly sweary comedy Wicked Little Letters is still in cinemas – the script is solidly penned by celebrated children’s book author Frank Cottrell Boyce, who notably also wrote the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics. With that film-making combo, you can bet this is cheeky, compassionate, irreverent and absolutely dripping with inspiration.
Ken Loach this is not. Everyone on the team has
A Past, but tragedy isn’t dwelt on. And if the on-the-nose messaging that ‘it’s not the medals that’s important, it’s the taking part’, ‘the power of sport to make a better world’ and ‘it’s never too late to seize a second chance’ are relentlessly booted home, you can’t fault the sentiments.
At two hours it’s way too long, particularly given the gameplay sequences aren’t all that. However, the main meat of the story happens off pitch, concerning the men’s mental health struggles.
Bill Nighy is obviously the big-name signing, but the supporting cast are all excellent, even in some underwritten roles. Callum Scott Howells gets to be loveable, as he was in TV’s It’s A Sin; Susan Wokoma repeatedly steals the show and Kit Young is now my new ‘one to watch’ after this. The fact most of the extras are drawn from real life Homeless World Cup teams worldwide lends crucial authenticity and, as for knock-out talent Micheal Ward – is there anything this Bafta-winning rising star can’t do?
Out today on Netflix