United We Fall

United We Fall is the story of five footballers playing for one of the world’s biggest football clubs -- Manchester United. We hear about their highs and lows – we see their wives and girlfriends and we even meet a Prime Minister. But we don’t – because this is a mockumentary – aiming its satirical gun at the world of football. It’s an easy target, you might think. Strange then that the film misses – badly.

The trailblazer for this type of a project is of course This is Spinal Tap, a classic comedy about idiosyncrasies of the real world and the unreal world of rock stars and the music industry. This film wants to do the same inside the world of football - but sadly it fails.

The problem is that the film has nothing new to say about these delusional caricatures and the rather (apparently) horrid world they live in. We see too many stereotypes for the ideas to be fresh. There’s the ‘self- loving’ player or the ‘socialist’ that is simply a poor-man’s poet from many a parody. They are racist, homophobic and arrogant. But not funny. And there lies the problem.

This is not the fault of the director Gary Sinyor or the cast perhaps – but the result of a basically bad idea. The only new thing here – is the ‘convert’ player, who is a little over done, but works because he is a fair representation of the rather hypocritical way sports and religion are mixed.

Fundamentally the film fails because it is just not funny enough. Perhaps the face that footballers are such an easy target – means there is a laziness in being clever with the parody. Mike Bassett this is not – and falling below that bar, is not something to be proud of.