High Hopes

1989
7.4| 1h48m| PG| en
Details

Slice-of-life look at a sweet working-class couple in London, Shirley and Cyril, his mother, who's aging quickly and becoming forgetful, mum's ghastly upper-middle-class neighbors, and Cyril's pretentious sister and philandering husband. Shirley wants a baby, but Cyril, who reads Marx and wants the world to be perfect, is reluctant. Cyril's mum locks herself out and must ask her snooty neighbors for help. Then Cyril's sister Valerie stages a surprise party for mum's 70th birthday, a disaster from start to finish. Shirley holds things together, and she and Cyril may put aside her Dutch cap after all.

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Reviews

Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever
Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
Staci Frederick Blistering performances.
marieinkpen I found this film embarrassing - no sophistication, absolutely no subtlety; it does not stand the test of time. The relationship between the two leads is OK - but the over-acting done by the sister, her husband and the people next door made me cringe. The supposed under-acting by the mother was nearly as bad - but I blame that on the director - spelling it out that he's not spelling it out for us. It is all so obvious - one is surprised it was made by an experienced director - it is like a classroom assignment from a group of 16 year olds. And all those fake working-class accents - I grew up in Essex and I lived in Bethnal Green for 10 years and I never heard anyone speak like that. The music is wonderful but far too loud and in your face. On the plus side, I loved the ending - maybe I'm sentimental after all.
asais I watched it after having seen the glowing reviews and references to mike Leigh's work, well all I saw was a cartoon. A political cheap shot that relies on such simplistic and exaggerated caricatures really only cheapens any point he is trying to make. The car salesman and his social-climbing wife are obnoxious to the point of absurdity, the posh folks next door are the same, all ice-cold and uncaring, basically he isn't doing so much social commentary as beating his point to death with such a ham-fisted delivery that he destroys his own credibility. Long shots of the elderly woman and her plight in this cartoon just come off as out of place in this film, on one hand it is pretending to explore real issues like aging and socialist ideas in thatchers Britain, but surrounded by the cartoonish back ground it just comes off as very pointless. You got where he was going in the first 25% of the film, and it doesn't really add anything from that point on, it just continues beating the dead horse, nothing much of real value is explored after that. Other reviews mention it explores dynamics of family and siblings and aging, but really it only touches on these in the most shallow way possible between the absurd moments of cartoonish acting. It is the kind of film you'd expect from a political hack, not a philosopher.
Michael Neumann Mike Leigh's bittersweet social satire dissected with devastating accuracy (and a sometimes heartbreaking sense of humor) the widening gap between the haves and have-nots in Margaret Thatcher's England, moving from transparent criticism to crass parody to, finally, a touching plea on behalf of the elderly. It's a gray little film, giddy and depressing all at once, although often as funny (and just as striking) as hearing fingernails scraped down a blackboard. Leigh's cross-section of British society rings true even at its most exaggerated, and his ear for language, whether mumbled Cockney slang or nasal upper-class snobbery, is pitch perfect.The film is essentially a showcase for some wonderfully defined characters: marginalized counterculture Marxists Cyril and Shirley; Cyril's ultra-neurotic middle-class sister and her vulgar salesman husband; an infirm old mum; a pair of callous upscale neighbors; and an odd, occasional houseguest named Wayne. The plotting is furtive: nothing much happens over the course of the film, giving the cast plenty of room to stretch out in their roles. The characters and story lines were created by the entire cast through extensive pre-production rehearsals, but the finished film is remarkably cohesive, with acting so natural it could easily be mistaken for improvisation if it weren't so well written. The result is a film of rare and genuine emotion: it's either the gloomiest comedy ever made or a tragedy with no shortage of laughs.
lindacamidge Ah, the comfort of the stereotype. Like a pair of warm slippers, with a little device set into the toe so that you only have to stir slightly to hear the reassuring sound of communal laughter.I won't labour the point. But an added annoyance was the difficult-to-swallow characterisation of the mother who, supposedly at seventy (which fits the ages of her children) acts at least five years older than my middle class mother (83) or - more tellingly - than my widowed working class mother-in-law (78). No, Mike, those crunch years for children come in your late fifties and sixties, not in your thirties.I think I might have found this film comforting in the eighties - when I remember feeling vaguely discontented and at odds with the world, and not being sure why; as I didn't live in London, I had only the vaguest idea of what a yuppie was. It would have set up a myth, an enemy: in fact, isn't that what we used to call a paper tiger? Comforting, but ultimately too easy to be useful?