Eye For Film >> Movies >> Up 'N' Under (1997) Film Review
Up 'N' Under
Reviewed by: Angus Wolfe Murray
![Up 'N' Under](/images/newsite/Up_N_Under_600.jpg)
The Full Monty/Brassed Off formula seems destined to run and run. John Godber's clapped out, beer-bellied, rugby league tossers are more unfit than Robert Carlyle's bunch of redundant steel workers and yet all they need is an injection of good old-fashioned northern pride. It makes t'heart leap, like.
Arthur (Gary Olsen) is a few weeks short of 40 and feeling the onset of scrapheapitis. His playing days are over. His one-man-one-van painting and decorating biz wipes its face. His wife, Doreen, thinks he's a pillock and her dad, who stays with them, eats his dinner most nights before he gets home. He sees his arch enemy, Reg Welsh (Tony Slattery), a working-class lad made good, flashing his nouveau riche accoutrements and mouthing off about his team, The Cobblers Arms, which wins the local amateur Sevens gala every time.
![Copy picture](/images/stills/u/up_n_under_1997_1.jpg)
Arthur bets him all the money he and Doreen have saved over the years that he can train a team, any team, in three weeks to beat The Cobblers. Reg shakes on it and chooses The Wheatsheaf Arms for Arthur, knowing that this shower couldn't do damage to a blind school's Under-14s. They have six players and most of them only turn up for the beer in the pub afterwards.
Arthur persuades Hazel (Samantha Janus) to help out. She owns a gym and is a fitness fanatic. She's also blonde and definite Blind Date material. The lads feel the burn and almost die. The training sessions become a slob's charter to sweat freely and expose flab. Hazel doesn't even get paid. She does it for love of the underdog.
Godber's script is as predictable as sleet on a waterlogged pitch. It lacks the bravado of his early theatre work, such as Bouncers. Olsen is a John Goodman lookalike and the rest appear to have been picked for their absence of sex appeal (exception Janus, who overloads on the stuff). Whenever stuck for aural furnishing a pop song is slotted onto the soundtrack and Godber's use of slow-mo takes precedent over anything more inventive. Griff Rhys-Jones' cameo as a radio hack comes across as a TV sketch, awkwardly out of place amongst these natural piss-takers, while the late Brian Glover, as Doreen's opinionated dad, gives a memorable farewell performance, stamping his authority on proceedings, like the old pro he was.
Reviewed on: 19 Jan 2001