Like Father

Joylessly earnest companion piece to BRASSED OFF & BILLY ELLIOT, working through three generations.

The pits have been closed for ten years and the tuba playing coal miner lead, has spent his retrenchment package. His son has won't go to band practice and dad abuses him for not keeping up. Meanwhile his own tape mended-glasses-father is being told his son's a scab for working on a not unimpressive orchestral piece for a one time neighbour,about to clear the land that the locals have been using for their pigeon coops for fifty years - canaries bred from the last ones to go down the pit.

The murky, contrasty colour alternates with desaturated flashbacks to gramps piano evenings ("What, me dad singing?") and domestic tyranny, in the days the head of the house would come home covered with coal dust.

A nice, well intended film about three generations of men in a hardscrabble northern English seaside town. The grandfather is a curmudgeon who races pigeons and refuses to sell his land to developers, feeling it will undermine the soul of the town (probably quite rightly). His son is a good hearted middle aged man, a music teacher who spends spare time teaching special needs kids. He's also a talented composer, and is commissioned to write a piece to celebrate the town's rebirth (the same re-birth his father is holding up) -- leading to conflicts between the father and son.

Meanwhile between his teaching, composing, helping others, and some drinking his wife and bullied son get little of his time or attention, leading to problems at home.

The acting is mostly good, but the flash-backs feel a bit heavy handed, and the whole thing is a bit familiar, and lacking in subtlety. It's not at all a bad film, just a little thin, which in turns leaves the heavy moments coming off a bit melodramatic.