Rough Around the Edges

I heard about this film through a friend and as a regular visitor to the Salford Film Festival I thought I'd pop along and have a look. I wasn't expecting much but boy was I wrong.

Apparently this is the directors first film but it's certainly no amateur effort. It's brilliantly written, well put together and although the budget constraints show occasionally it never detracts from the overall feel of the film.

The cast all act their socks off, the taxi drivers in particular are very funny, they deserve their own film.

If this is what they can do with no budget, wow, someone give them some cash, the next one will be amazing. It's great to see a truly funny comedy coming from the UK.

Well done to all involved.

I have never given a ten out of ten rating for a film but that ended as of last night. Rough Around the Edges was shown at the Sixth Salford Film Festival. A zero budget feature film with tons of laughs and surprisingly a lot of layers too. A northern comedy directored, written and produced by Jim Dickinson. The film is a detailed look at the sometimes messy business of modern society. Involving single mums, pathetic men, back stabbing girls, bent coppers, virgins, a stripper, cabby's, a mystery dead body and a man with a guitar. They all become entangled in an obscure but true to life portrayal of a crazy six days up north.

Clive Cope plays Sergeant Pepper whose old school style leads him to a suspension but even when he is off duty he is still trying to crack the proverbial whip. His next door neighbour, a stripper with a small secret is everything that Pepper detests. The Stripper who plans to cheat his way to victory in a poker tournament at the weekend plans to fleece the clueless taxi drivers who are keeping a dead body with them in the boot of one of their taxis. Then there is the single mother who has an insatiable lust for younger men who has also booked the stripper for Saturday night and then there are the bitchy sixth formers, swapping men and insults whilst the virgins are missing out on all the fun. In the midst of a portable toilet salesman who is attempting to woo his babysitter with the details of his career. I could go on but it would take me forever.

Jim Dickinson's creation is truly hilarious, but it doesn't end there. Dickinson has gone beyond the usually British comedy film by creating a film with interesting visuals and the creation of some amazing characters. It would appear in recent times that a large amount of British films encourage their actors to over act their performances to get the laughs. Dickinson doesn't and it shows. Everyone who watches this film believes the characters and that is the biggest asset of Rough Around the Edges. The characters are layered, not in a complex fashion but in a way that demands the audience to watch on. The characters are amazingly interesting yet these people could quite easily be your neighbours.

Marvyn Dickinson and Clive Cope shine as the two bent coppers. Cope and Dickinson display perfect comic timing and a northern realism that engages the audience into the film and demands them to believe every single word that they speak. Tom McNulty provides another stand out performance as the virgin whose sexual frustration lands him in complete humiliation. McNulty's hilarious performance leaves the audience wanting more from his character and his equally geeky friend. They are both set to make a return in the third instalment of this trilogy and I for one cannot wait.

However crude, rude and downright disgusting at times the film appears it is impossible to fault the film for its vulgarity, because it has to be said that in certain areas this is exactly what British society has become. You know it, I know it and Jim Dickinson clearly knows it better than anyone else.

i saw this low budget film just before Christmas it was absolutely hilarious it was clear from the off that the film was low budget, and there was no named recognisable actors in the production but my god it was one of the funniest films i have ever seen and we laughed all the way through it was a key talking point with me and my friends over the Christmas period. it is a genuine lol production with gaffs and laffs all the way to the end credits, a bizarre country singer is just one of a melting pot of unusual characters and totally unexpected , very unique the story is about an assortment of different characters that bump into one another throughout the film every one of them been typical of people you know in real life, one of the mums in the film is sex mad and I'm sure she was based on my ex's mother who was quite a milf in her day! the story is superb and works so, so well i would go to see this film over and over and genuinely pay to see this before any other Hollywood rubbish thats been tried one hundred times before, see this film before you die this should be added to life's to do list.

You can tell this this isn't a big studio production, but you'd be hard pressed to spot that this is a first effort from someone with no film experience at all. This is a really professional effort and the film's got a sparkle all of its own. The acting performances are largely of a stunning quality but it's the writing that really makes this stand out. The dialogue is crisp, lively and tremendously funny, and each character's got a distinct and interesting personality. The film moves along at a real clip and will keep you engrossed as all the characters are so well realised that you'll care about each and every one of them, even, or perhaps especially, the idiots, of which there are many. If I had to pick holes I'd say the script and film could have done with a tighter edit just towards the end as it gets slightly flabby, but that's picking holes and the one man show (Jim Dickinson) will surely learn from his experience and produce an even better effort next time. Well worth a look, an indie debut that could well be the start of something very big.

Britain is sinking down the drain. I've always wondered who to blame for the sinking morals of society, the obsession with sex, the me me me culture. I've seen them on film. Now I know.

Rough Around the Edges is quirky. It's brilliant. It's not put together like anything I've seen before, certainly nothing that's stuck in my memory. If you used to seeing films in the standard format, then this is like a trip to "Kill Bill".

It's hard to believe this is a first effort from director Jim Dickinson. Can I compare Jim with Quentin Tarantino? I don't know. There's something there though, the obsession, the unique approach.

The character are well thought out. Not too complex but they all have their faults, something that the film starts to exploit. The humour is low, somewhere around the gutters of society that the film represents. But for all it's swimming in the cesspit of human morality this film is above all funny.

I can't wait to see the promised follow ups. There's lots to go at, areas to be groped, people to be exploited.

4 inches is normal....Isn't it???? Please?????