Looking For Eric Review

Grim reality these days is evidently a little too grim and real. First Mike Leigh delivered his cheerful tribute to looking on the bright side, Happy-Go-Lucky. Now Britain's other great social-realist Ken Loach has turned in an unexpectedly mischievous comedy-drama about searching for the hero inside. Looking For Eric is Loach's most accessible film for years and the most playful of his entire career, but the director has sacrificed none of the values we traditionally associate with A Ken Loach Film. Written by Loach's long-time collaborator Paul Laverty but inspired by Cantona himself, between them Red Ken and Eric The Red chip Loach's socially-aware storytelling into a fantastical league of their own.

Divorced Manchester postman Eric (Steve Evets) is struggling with two errant teenage stepsons whose principle passions are computer games, porn and weed. Depressed, lonely and knocked out of shape by a car accident, Eric's lost control of the ball. Skinning up a late night spliff, he sparks up an imaginary conversation with his idol, Manchester United's genius forward Eric Cantona. As if by magic Cantona materialises in Eric's bedroom and begins dispensing some of that gnomic, Canton-ese wisdom - advice which the real Eric hopes might help him win back his first wife Lily (Stephanie Bishop), whom he abandoned with a baby 20 years ago and who now won't have anything to do with him.

Though Loach's films have rarely been noted for their broad humour, writer Laverty has always sprinkled them with a steady supply of wit. Looking For Eric's first half-hour comes loaded with dry, daft, laugh-out-loud comedy, much of it led by Eric's mate Meatballs ('Early Doors' star John Henshaw) whose bulk and ballast prevent Eric - and eventually the film - from losing the plot completely.

That opening comic salvo is followed by the potentially awkward arrival of a gangster sub-plot centred round Eric's son Ryan (Gerard Kearns). It's at this point that Cantona is relegated to the background and the comedy consigned to the bench as Loach pitches honest graft against easy money, and criminal individualism against community spirit. The agenda is shamelessly unsubtle, and some of the film's colour is drained as Loach gives in to dogmatic black and white. All of which pales against an extraordinary finale in which British cinema's most dedicated leftie taps the unexplored - and possibly unimagined - potential of the feelgood vigilante film.