qetzalita
I try not to rate a movie with a high score, usually because in a film there is more things to evaluate than a plot, (the thing most people let themselves get influenced by). That's why most of movies don't go up a 7 or 8, in the better of cases: the great majority is not worth it.This film is charming and couldn't give it less than an eight.
The screenplay is just so well-written, you never feel you are bored while watching, despite the absurd of the simplicity in the story: a family, two loving parents, a lame friend, a swindler and a couple of interesting twins. Really, what makes this film awesome, is the mix between these facts, the little things that happen to all of them and the visuals, (I would also mention the outstanding acting performances). The camera work and edition is professionally done, as well. Mike Leigh, despite being more a ''theatrical person'' (you can notice this tendency all throughout the film), and being this his 4th movie, well, he knew how to use the cinematographic tools he had in a particular artistic way.
gavin6942
Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, leads aerobics at a primary school, jokes like a vaudevillian, agrees to waitress at a friend's new restaurant and dotes on Andy, a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, and with a drunken friend, buys a broken down lunch wagon.What to make of this film? It seems like the focus is on the twins and how different they are, while all the other characters are just background. Those two alone are quite striking, with one being a bulimic anarchist and the other an androgynous female who could be mistaken for a boy. What is to be made of them? The title of the film can only be seen s ironic, as no one here is truly happy. Director Mike Leigh covers some of the same ground as he does in "Secrets and Lies", in that he explores the working class world of England. Although I do not think it is an intentional this time around, it is still unavoidable.
Tim Kidner
Life is Sweet was the first Leigh film I saw, about 6 years ago. To mark his new film, out this week in cinemas I bought the DVD of this specially.I settled to reacquaint myself with Leigh's regular team of character actors. I've seen all his films subsequently and have a feel of his breadth of work, from tragicomedy to drama. As such, I found the characters' mannerisms and foibles to be grating and really quite irritating, as if they'd been overacted, or misjudged. At first. But, as with any family that open their front door to you and until you see and hear how they click and survive as a family unit, you really do wonder what you've let yourself in for. So, having 'moved in', within 15 minutes I was warming to them. Ten more and I felt I knew them and was totally immersed in their humour and lives. I'm still surprised as to how political and social statements from the late '80's (as well as a trip down memory lane; rusty Ford Escorts and shell suits) manifest themselves through the cast. Bit like the kitchen sink dramas of the '60's but without the grainy black & white, the grime and hitting womenfolk. Leigh's canvas is much wider and behind everyday doors in everyday streets lie the often dismissed emotional and confused pains of modern life. Ordinary people whose problems seem to be teetering on the edge and to them, unique. The acting in those more poignant scenes is, as I sometimes describe, natural, as is. As you'd expect a real person to do. With broad humour, wit and a brisk pace this is still a sparkling snapshot of British semi-suburbia twenty years ago. Nothing too shocking or gratuitous. Not the red-hot, pure grit of hard unemployment of Shane Meadows but the sort of folk we know about, or of, who work alongside us, holding the country together. Somehow.Sometimes, watching this, you'll wonder how, though....
andyfennessy
A superb example of Mike Leigh's directing method - working with his actors, many of them regulars, making up most of the script as they go along.No falling empires or coveted magical rings here, just the small victories and tiny despairs of everyday life - Timothy Spall's ridiculous restaurant ("Liver in Lager"??), Jane Horrocks' eating disorder and general estrangement from the world, Jim Broadbent and his grimy little burger van, Clair Skinner's endearingly sensible tomboy plumber... all exquisite little portraits. Best of all is Alison Steadman as the suburban Earth-mother trying to hold it all together.It shows, above all, that a great film can be about anything really, as long as the direction, acting and script is of this calibre. Ben Hur, it ain't!Absolutely marvelous - 9/10.
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