Cup-final collision
Deborah Ross
Sixty Six
(12a, nationwide)
Yes, I know now that I should have seen Borat instead and, yes, I am kicking myself — although not too hard, as that would be silly — but Sixty Six seemed so up my Jewish, north London street that in the end I simply could not resist. I mean, come on, you just don’t get too many films about Jews and football to the pound, do you? True enough, there was André Labourious’s Passez le ball, Juif, Passez! but even I would concede that, while it certainly has a place in the Jewish football film genre, it’s not his best work. It was the Juif, I think, who was a wandering one and couldn’t even be trusted to turn up for kick-off. He was bloody hard to mark, though.
So Sixty Six it is, then, and I even take along my teenage son, a Jew and a keen footballer, because I’m thinking that if it’s up my street and we live on the same street, then surely it has to be up his street, too. As it happens, my son was once a ringer for an orthodox Jewish football team where the mothers would spend all their time (and I swear this is true) campaigning for their boys to come off because it was too cold. ‘You can’t pull Ben off,’ the manager would protest. ‘But he’s shivering,’ the mother would retort. ‘Ben! Off! Now.’ And so Ben would come off and then Sam and then Josh and then Reuben and then Ethan and then Adam and ... the team lost quite a lot, although no one could ever figure out why.
Now, shall we do the plot rehash bit? Get it over and done with? OK. It’s essentially the story (based, apparently, on the real-life experience of director Paul Weiland) of 12year-old Bernie, who, much to his horror, discovers the Bar Mitzvah he longs for the party; the attention; the showering of gifts! — is due to coincide with the World Cup Final. Will anyone turn up? So that’s the crux of it, and it sounds like a good crux, and I really, really, really want to love this film. I so reach out to love it that you can actually hear my bones straining and creaking with all the love I am ready to give. And yet? Look, this isn’t the biggest ‘And yet?’ ever, but it’s quite a hefty ‘And yet?’ all the same. As my son says afterwards, ‘It’s meant to be a comedy but there aren’t any good jokes in it and it took itself too seriously.’ He’s spot-on, I think. He’s got brains, my son. And, yes, since you ask, he has inherited my beauty, too.
It starts happily enough with Bernie (Gregg Sulkin) planning his big day — ‘It’s going to be The Gone with the Wind of Bar Mitzvahs’ — but it just doesn’t develop sufficiently to go anywhere from there. We’re meant, I think, to get a sense of Bernie being an overlooked child, hence his hunger for attention, but while this is brought home unsubtly the once — when his family take a trip to the seaside and leave him behind — it’s never then woven into the narrative. You are told it, but never feel it, just as you are told most things in this film, but never feel any of them.
The characters, for some reason, never properly bed in. You never feel for his parents, Esther (Helena Bonham Carter) and Manny (Eddie Marsan), who have their own problems, and you don’t get a sense of the time. It looks like prop after prop. I suppose all of this would be OK if the script were funny enough, if you were carried along by the laughs, but you’re not. I now can’t recall a single good gag. And there is also a subplot to do with Manny’s diminishing finances that simply takes itself much, much too seriously. So it’s not a comedy, and it’s not a drama, which does make you think: where is Jack Rosenthal when you really need him?
That said, there are some charming touches — like Manny’s inability to drive faster than 25 mph, and the plastic-covered furniture — but not nearly enough to counter the disappointment. There is probably a good film trying to get out of this so-so film, but until then it’s a TV hour, max.
My son was not won over by Sixty Six, and neither was I. It’s a shame, I think. It’s not a great shame. It’s not the biggest shame ever, but it’s a shame all the same. Like I said, you don’t get too many Jewish football films to the pound, so it would have been nice if this had been a tip-top one. However, on a brighter note, I can recommend André Labourious’s follow-up to Passez, Juif, Passez! which is Arrêtez de trembler, Juif, ce n’est pas si froid. It’s also said to be based on a true story, which, as it happens, I can totally believe.
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