bettywhait06 Review of Outside Bet

Outside Bet (2012)

Far fetched long shot too unlikely to succeed

[4/10 · 20 September 2012]

On paper, Outside Bet looked a sure fire hit. A group of redundancy haunted friends clubbing together to buy a racehorse with a heart warming love story thrown in and a blatant yet shameless 80s soundtrack, similarities with The Full Monty were inescapable. Yet the end result is a hollow, uneven mish mash of cliché and disbelief, and the film cannot escape the confines of it's cardboard cut out characters. There is plenty of charm throughout and the picture desperately wants to be liked – perhaps too desperately – but even if you view this as a modern fairy tale and don't worry about the glaring horse racing inaccuracies, there are still numerous scenes that are just too contrived to be believable. Firstly, a complete stranger enters the local pub and asks the regulars if they want to buy a racehorse – that he tells them is convinced is good (try walking into a pub and asking if anyone wants to buy a really poor racehorse) – whilst at the same time sheepishly admitting that there may well be some illegality surrounding the ownership of the equine. Yet despite this main character Mark (Calum NcNab) goes along to see the animal – which seems to be trained in an open field on a rugby pitch – and after seeing it jump over a couple of poles is convinced he's looking at a winner. Move over Doctor Dolittle. Whilst there is a scene that attempts to acknowledge that a racehorse also costs much more than just an initial outlay (training fees, entry fees etc.) Mark reminds us that on the credit side, there is of course, prize money. No matter that British horseracing (especially in the 1980s) had some of lowest prize money in Europe and that virtually 80 per cent of racehorse owners suffered annual losses on having a horse in training (which remains the case today). But again, perhaps the racing side of the film is not meant to be taken seriously, and is just a backdrop to character development – even though this isn't exactly forthcoming. Maybe The Full Monty and Brassed Off have a lot to answer for – character dimension these days seems to be about having a few scenes where they talk about their past and we learn about some of their intricate details (Bob Hoskins and wife Rita Tushingham saving up for a caravan for example) and away we go. There is also a major attempt to bring some gritty despair into the plot – the men are linked by employment in the typesetting / printing industry and the Wapping strikes that blighted this era on the coat tails of the miners dispute means most of the characters are facing redundancy and an uncertain financial future. But this makes the fact that they all eventually cough up £1000 each to own a share in the horse (ridiculously called The Mumper) even more preposterous. I don't know of anybody facing a financial straightjacket that would willingly plough a huge sum of money into a racehorse – even if central character Mark is convincing and tries to 'talk them into it'. Then there is the racecourse action. The races themselves look like caricatures of Victorian races and the film suffers from the same fate as virtually all other British flicks that attempt to show sport – it just isn't realistic. The Mumper's second race sparks even more hilarity for the viewer as virtually all of the syndicate take out their life savings to have a bet on the horse. They gleefully hand over their money without a care in the world. And let's not forget The Mumper is a 20/1 shot – so the likelihood of any return on such massive bets would be very low indeed. To add insult to injury, the friendly bookie happily takes the bet – despite faced with a quarter of a million pounds payout – he grins like a cheeky rogue and doesn't bat an eyelid. I can tell you not one British bookmaker would accept a bet like that at those odds. It's a shame because the film should have been much better – with a sterling cast of the likes of Hoskins, Jenny Agutter, Dudley Dutton and Phil Davis, we should have been lauding this as a whimsical British success story, but they are underused and that points straight to a weak script and a story not properly fleshed out. The tragic side issue is that Hoskins of course would retire from acting due to illness shortly after the release of this film, and although he is subdued in places, he still remains as watchable as ever. Like a friendly puppy, this film is impossible to hate because it clearly has a desire to please, but like all loving puppies, wait and see how you feel when you furniture is chewed up and your carpet ruined. It tries to drag too many feelgood elements together that have worked so well for other filmmakers, without having an identity of its own.