An entertaining if barely credible parable about the power of family and friends with a touch of fantasy as postman Eric Bishop, inspired by France and Manchester United football hero Eric Cantona, gets his and his dysfunctional family's lives on track in the face of seeming adversity.
Eric has two out of control live-in step-sons, the eldest of which has fallen in with local gangster Zac, a failed marriage to childhood sweetheart Lily and generally endures life in circumstances not much above squalor. About the only things he has going for him are his postman mates at work and their shared love of Manchester United, for whom, to the uninitiated, Cantona was the talismanic genius behind their rise to success in the late 90's. At his lowest ebb, Eric the King steps into Eric the Loser's life, like a human version of Harvey the Rabbit, dispensing the Frenchman's famous cryptic philosophy to encourage the other Eric to sort his life out.
For Me though, this was a film of two halves, with the first half, where Eric's various family predicaments loom large, with the undercurrent of his nascent wish to rekindle his relationship with Lily percolating along nicely in the background. However in the second half, the film descends a bit into latter-day Ealing Comedy as a few coach loads of his mates, suitably masked up in Cantona false-faces accompany him on a mission to sort out the bad guy, resolving his son's problems and clearing the way with Lily at a stroke.
For me the juxtaposition jars a little too much and in the end I felt somewhat manipulated by the director. That said there are some good performances, especially Steve Evers as the heavy laden hero, John Henshaw (now ironically getting work advertising the Royal Mail's service on UK TV) as senior postman "Meatballs" and Stephanie Bishop as the waiting-to-be-wooed Lily. The great man himself, "Ooh -Aah"Cantona acquits himself well, naturally playing up his individualism and mystique.
I somehow didn't foresee this film ending up as a feel-good almost family entertainment during the early stages and think the journey didn't lead necessarily to the natural destination, but it was still a pleasant, diverting modern-day entertainment, worth a watch.
Eric has two out of control live-in step-sons, the eldest of which has fallen in with local gangster Zac, a failed marriage to childhood sweetheart Lily and generally endures life in circumstances not much above squalor. About the only things he has going for him are his postman mates at work and their shared love of Manchester United, for whom, to the uninitiated, Cantona was the talismanic genius behind their rise to success in the late 90's. At his lowest ebb, Eric the King steps into Eric the Loser's life, like a human version of Harvey the Rabbit, dispensing the Frenchman's famous cryptic philosophy to encourage the other Eric to sort his life out.
For Me though, this was a film of two halves, with the first half, where Eric's various family predicaments loom large, with the undercurrent of his nascent wish to rekindle his relationship with Lily percolating along nicely in the background. However in the second half, the film descends a bit into latter-day Ealing Comedy as a few coach loads of his mates, suitably masked up in Cantona false-faces accompany him on a mission to sort out the bad guy, resolving his son's problems and clearing the way with Lily at a stroke.
For me the juxtaposition jars a little too much and in the end I felt somewhat manipulated by the director. That said there are some good performances, especially Steve Evers as the heavy laden hero, John Henshaw (now ironically getting work advertising the Royal Mail's service on UK TV) as senior postman "Meatballs" and Stephanie Bishop as the waiting-to-be-wooed Lily. The great man himself, "Ooh -Aah"Cantona acquits himself well, naturally playing up his individualism and mystique.
I somehow didn't foresee this film ending up as a feel-good almost family entertainment during the early stages and think the journey didn't lead necessarily to the natural destination, but it was still a pleasant, diverting modern-day entertainment, worth a watch.