Welfare state is one of those grand achievements of modern civilisations that looks great in theory but leaves much to be desired in practice, at least when it produces something like the protagonist of The Martins, 2001 British comedy written and directed by Tony Grounds. The plot starts in Hatfield, small town north of London where Robert Martin (played by Lee Evans), an unemployed man, lives in council estate together with his family – long suffering wife Angie (played by Kathie Burke), pregnant 14-year old daughter Katie (played by Terri Dumont), her brother Little Bob (played by Eric Byrne) and Angie’s mother Anthea (played by Linda Bassett). Despite not achieving anything of note in his life, Robert is very proud of himself and his family, and tries to provide something like a good life to his loved ones by taking part in various competitions, including one that could allow him to take his family on dream island vacation. When one of such efforts fail, he feels so angry that he tracks down actual winners, abducts them at gun point and takes their winning ticket.
Lee Evans is one of Britain’s most popular stand-up comedians whose fame allowed him to try his hand at film acting, mainly playing supporting roles in number of high budget Hollywood productions. This effort, conceived by Tony Rounds, writer who mostly worked on television, represents strange combination of irreverent black comedy and social drama. Rounds have written immensely obnoxious characters that most viewers would try to avoid in real life and made their actions, that involve serious acts of violence, morally questionable. Yet, at the same time he tried to give some sort of justification for the protagonist. Lee Evans does relatively solid job in his role and there are some jokes that actually work, but Evans’ efforts in the end fail to elevate this film over mediocrity and prevent predictable descent into oblivion.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
_
Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo
InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Unstoppable Domains: https://unstoppabledomains.com/?ref=3fc23fc42c1b417 Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax y Bitcoin Lightning HIVE donations: https://v4v.app/v1/lnurlp/qrcode/drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e
BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7
