Preteen years can be so awkward, especially when you're in the shadow of a bully
big brother. And an obsessive-compulsive father. And a blind rabbi preparing you
for your Bar Mitzvah. This is the sweet, goofy story of North London's Bernie Rubens,
a non-athletic, bespectacled son waiting excitedly for his Jewish transition into manhood.
But the year is 1966 (thusly, the championship), and as any Brit knows, thither was something
else going on that year.
That "something else" was the presence of the underdog England soccer club in the
World Cup Final. With a last match scheduled for the same day as inadequate Bernie's Bar
Mitzvah celebration. In music director Paul Weiland's "true-ish narration" (a good establishing
trick there), our slight paladin carefully prepares, with Martha Stewart-like preciseness,
to at long last take his place as the nerve center of attention. But there's that nettlesome football
squad everyone is rooting for�
Weiland, with written material team Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, could have simply
drawn the analog between the two events, but Sixty Six aims for more, and ordinarily
succeeds. The filmmakers add together depth to Bernie's woes by exposing his household issues,
most notably those of his ultra-nebbish padre Manny.
As Manny, character worker Eddie Marsan (The Illusionist, Hancock) makes the most of his bulging
jowls and inward face, developing a shlumpy Willy Loman-type who's incessantly sad,
aflutter and proud at the same time. The sticky relationship betwixt Manny and Bernie
(assured newcomer Gregg Sulkin) is initially played for giggles -- unrivalled a morsel far on
the ridiculousness scale -- but is later the pivot percentage point of Bernie's warm recollections.
The absurd moment, involving a terribly unrelenting dog, illustrates Weiland's episodic
weakness in combining to a fault many styles, a common move in the "advent of geezerhood" genre.
Most of the film resides in that funny-yet-sad territory, but when Sixty Six goes toward
goofier humour -- and yeah, there's a blind gag with the rabbi -- the narrative loses
a piece of focus.
The saving good will is that Weiland does each of the tones very well. The timing is
solid whether the laugh is visual or dialogue-based, and the heartwarming moments
are indeed touching. For many viewers, this level of layers may be seen as more of
a plus than a problem.
While Marsan and Sulkin command the most attention, two Oscar nominees play a bit
of second fiddle, and do so praiseworthily. Helena Bonham Carter is Bernie's fast and
healthy mom; Stephen Rea participates in a bit purpose as an asthma dr. who
helps Bernie with his ventilation and newfound interest in world football.
Which leads us to the fantastic footage of the 1966 World Cup, which Weiland uses
gracefully to create analog action or insert the Rubens' tarradiddle within a far larger
nationalist circumstance. Early in the photographic film, Manny, a grocer, warns a much larger competition tha
t England loves an underdog. The land certainly did that twelvemonth, and Weiland is
bright enough to work a little cinematic magic during that World Cup final.
It's a termination that eventually overstays its welcome, sliding into a bit of melodrama.
But for a few shiny moments then and end-to-end, Sixty Six is a satisfying trivial
surprise, exactly like Bernie and that scrappy small soccer team.
(Side note: The release of Sixty Six comes just about the same time as the DVD issue
of The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, another foreign film near a Jewish neighborhood
during the World Cup (Brazil, 1970). Talk about a specific genre and a weird coincidence...)
Mazel tov!
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