Marvellous is actually based on a true person. Neil Baldwin lives with his mum, deeply religious and wants to run away to the circus to be a clown and make people happy.
Neil is also a person with mild learning difficulties, his mother is worried how he could cope on his own but Neil never lets setbacks hold him back. He makes friends whether its bishops, Archbishops, politicians or football managers.
After being abandoned by the circus, he becomes a greeter at Keele University, he becomes a kit-man to his beloved Stoke City and befriended by their manager Lou Macari. He even turned up regularly at the Oxbridge boat race standing behind the race referee.
Neil was eventually awarded a honorary degree in 2013 at Keele University. Its a life affirming film with the real Neil Baldwin popping up with Toby Jones who portrays him alongside other real life individuals such as Lou Macari. Its almost a fantasy but you keep getting reminded that this is based on true facts as these real people pop up. When you see Neil having tea with Tony Benn in the House of Commons is because he really did know his son Stephen.
Jones does a good job in getting under the skin of Neil, channelling his optimistic spirit and also the doldrums that he enters when his mother dies. Its moving as well as funny with tinges of sadness.
The film is supposedly a period piece but you are never sure when in the past its based, I guess much of the events took place in the 1970s but Macari became manager for Stoke in the early 1990s and Neil has been an unofficial greeter for Keele University for around 50 years when he got there as a schoolboy.
It surely is an individualistic, rather left field film, well it had to be made that way if they wanted to display Neil's indomitable spirit.
