world_of_weird Review of Rita, Sue and Bob Too

Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987)

Crude, accurate and painfully funny (mild spoilers)

[16 September 2004]

Be warned - if you like Richard Curtis's awfully nice idea of romantic comedies with Hugh Grant being jolly pleasant and frightfully British, then give 'Rita, Sue and Bob Too' a VERY wide berth, because this will make you choke on your cucumber sandwiches. It's a grim and gritty study of British working-class life at its most honest and vulgar, and it never once romanticizes its subjects or loses sight of the truth. Council estate schoolgirls Rita (plain and dowdy, heavy metal biker brothers) and Sue (brassy and busty, alcoholic dad, lazy mum) earn extra pocket-money babysitting for the aspirational, nouveau-riche Bob and his prudish, wannabe-'posh' wife. When Bob takes them up on the moors, cuts the small talk and starts discussing contraceptives with them, you know things are going to get coarse, and they do, with one of the funniest (and most graphic) sex scenes you'll ever witness. The girls see their nocturnal romps with Bob ("His legs weren't half hairy!", just one of dozens of memorable quotes) as nothing more than a bit of fun, whilst Bob sees them as an escape valve for his rampant libido and failing marriage. To call this a comedy of manners would be like calling a Vin Deisel film intelligent, but on a basic, plain-talk level, that's exactly what it is. Bob's house, though expensively decorated and furnished, is in appalling taste, and the scenes where he politely argues with his faux-genteel wife (who obviously considers herself a cut above something as vulgar as sexual intercourse) are reminiscent of Mike Leigh's 'Abigail's Party'. Sue's parents are hilarious, with the acting honours going to Sue's perma-drunk dad, a wonky-eyed walking slum who's all bluster and no action. The supporting characters, like it or not, are also bang on the money - Black Lace, essentially playing themselves, turn up as a hideous party band, comedian Kulvinder Ghir does a convincing turn as the shy Asian lad who is, by turns, charmingly vulnerable and frighteningly thuggish, Sue's leering, jeering, nosey neighbors are hilarious and the harried schoolteacher (who has to stop a daytrip to an obviously historical village from turning into an all-out riot when Sue picks a fight with a girl who has called her a "slag"!) with his Arthur Askey impersonations - wasted on an ignorant class of no-hopers - is a virtual textbook example of how to get a lot out of a little role. Although this film is hugely offensive, it's also hugely entertaining and will stand as a valuable social document of a tumultuous period of British history - you can take that to the bank!