Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

beresfordjd I usually love Leigh's stuff. Grownups, Nuts in May and Abigail's Party are almost genius, but Life is Sweet is very disappointing. One can usually recognise the characters portrayed or even associate yourself with them or their situations but only Alison Steadman's character seems real. Jane Horrocks is really talented but her character here is too over the top with the most irritating voice since JarJar Binks!! Clare Skinner is good as Nicola's twin sister and they are uncannily alike. Yes they are ordinary working class people and their life is humdrum for the most part. Timothy Spall is wasted in an underplayed comic role which does not really work. The scene where Alison confronts her daughter, Nicola is a good one and reality shines through but for most of the film the parts are not as good as the whole.

Steve Pulaski Life is Sweet is a deeply moving, tough slice-of-life served on the grandiose platter that is cinema. It's a rich little film centered around an incredibly dysfunctional working class family just north of London, residing in a congested yet heavily-decorated home. The family is made up of hard-working and ambitious father Andy (Jim Broadbent), playful and often whiny mother Wendy (Alison Steadman), determined and introverted adolescent Natalie (Claire Skinner), and her sarcastic often patronizing twin Nicola (Jane Horrocks).Writer/director Mike Leigh follows this dysfunctional bunch, rarely orchestrating a frame that isn't fixated on one of the family members. Through the limitless realms of conversational intimacy and quietly effective, filmic poetry, he allows his characters to talk openly and frequently rather than handing them a contrived plot to work off of. Leigh's style is an incredible one. He takes his actors, provides them with an outline for specific scenes, and allows them to improvise and bounce ideas of one another so as to squeeze all the possibilities out of a certain scene and setting. When Leigh and his tight- knit band of actors are ready, shooting will commence.Through this tactic, Leigh allows for a rare and unfortunately underrated style of intimacy to prevail. The first fifteen minutes of Life is Sweet provided me with an unparalleled depiction of rapid-fire conversation that I have gone far too long without seeing. This style comes from everyone in the family, who respond just quick and spontaneous enough for realism to triumph over drivel and just naturalistic enough to sound authentic and as if they're making the material up on the dime (which they relatively did). The gifted improvisationist on hand here is Horrocks, playing a deeply- troubled girl who doesn't know what she wants or what direction she is going in life and her only vice is to attack her family members and acquaintances in a demonizing, mean-spirited way. However, this character is not contemptible, at least to us, as we see her insecurity and burdened attitude from a human standpoint rather than one where our response almost seems to giggle and mimic her behavior. To combat her family's conventional sense of behavior and the world around her, Horrocks' Nicola uses buzzwords and names she willfully takes out of context. "Fascist!," she screams at her mother after she disapproves of her daughter's actions. One can only admire her cute little resistance and opposition to authority for what it is. Her defense mechanism is taking everything, regardless of how genial and well-meaning it is, and using it as an insult or a demeaning remark from somebody ostensibly in an higher position than she is. Despite this, her character has the ability to potentially relate to other members of the audience probably more-so than any other character in this film (and they all can be pretty damn relatable).A subplot involves a roly-poly, pudgy man named Aubrey (Timothy Spall), a good friend of this dysfunctional family who plans on opening a restaurant downtown, serving unique and somewhat- daring cuisines. Spall plays a character fit for a farce and, at first, seems to be Leigh's attempt to steer this project away from heights too depressing and offputting. However, Leigh finds ways to get this character to fit in perfectly with this dark and often bleak material, offering a slapstick force to the story that isn't too overbearing or nauseating and tiresome. Leigh writes a difficult character effectively and Spall musters up an ample amount of energy and drive to play the character beautifully. The cinematography by Dick Pope (who would later go on to do Oscar winning cinematographical work in The Illusionist along with similar work in Richard Linklater's Bernie) is also a sight for sore eyes here, combining an array of soft colors with the tenderness of the London atmosphere. Brought into wonderful conjunction with Leigh's astute framing - which occasionally turns daring by narrowing itself in setting to small rooms and through open doorways - the appearance of the film is comparable to the style of independent auteur Wes Anderson. It's touching and a beautiful inclusion to a well-told story.Ultimately, Life is Sweet is character-heavy and that's its best attribute. Because of its deep-rooted investments in six very intriguing people, it allows its themes and story to hit notes of actual working class life. These same characters could be thrown in a belittling film that either relies too heavily on self- referential trite or nonsensical antics, but instead, sees them as easily-breakable souls through a lens of considerable warmness. I loved Life is Sweet almost as much as my own life - and without the context of this review, that line would seem like a hopeless line of overpraise.NOTE: Two important sidenotes I felt would feel awkward included in my review; one, Life is Sweet is available on DVD and Blu-Ray through The Criterion Collection, a too- often overlooked film- distribution company outside of the film community that is committed to releasing American film works of considerable quality and significance along with exceptional films of the world. They've released yet another masterful film that may've gone unseen had they not exist.The other note I have is a question to viewers about Wendy, the mother of the picture. Throughout the film, I noticed her hair turn gray, specifically during the scene when her and Nicola have a meaningful heart-to-heart. I'm curious - is her hair dyed for effect or a result or breakneck improvisation?Starring: Jim Broadbent, Alison Steadman, Claire Skinner, Jane Horrocks, Stephen Rea, Timothy Spall, David Thewlis, and Moya Brady. Directed by: Mike Leigh.

James Hitchcock Mike Leigh is one of the true independent auteurs in the British film industry, and one of the few major British directors who has not allowed himself to be seduced away by Hollywood. His films, generally based on modern urban English working-class or middle-class life, concentrate more on character than on action and have a very distinctive style which arises out of his equally distinctive method of working, based upon allowing a story to emerge through improvisation, rehearsals and discussions with his cast before shooting actually begins. He generally uses a select group of actors, including Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall and his one-time wife Alison Steadman.Broadbent, Spall and Steadman all appear in "Life Is Sweet", a comedy based upon the lives of a family from the North London suburb of Enfield- father Andy, mother Wendy and their 22-year-old twin daughters Natalie and Nicola. Andy works as a chef, but hates his job and harbours ambitions of running his own business. He has bought a dilapidated fast-food van which, at some unspecified future date, he intends to clean and restore in order to start up a fast-food business, but has not taken any further steps towards realising his goal. Another major character is Andy's friend Aubrey, another chef, who has taken his own entrepreneurial ambitions a stage further by opening his own French restaurant named "The Regret Rien" after the Edith Piaf song.Like a number of British film-makers from the eighties and early nineties, Leigh made his films from an essentially left-wing position and was critical of the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. "Life is Sweet", which appeared in the last year of her premiership, can be seen as a veiled satire on the cult of the entrepreneur which flourished under Thatcherism and on the tendency to see business, both big and small, as the sole key to national success. The characters of Andy and Aubrey are well contrasted. Andy is a competent chef but lacks the drive to become a successful independent businessman; his ambitions never seem to amount to much more than vague daydreams. As Wendy says, he has "two speeds, slow and stop".Aubrey, by contrast, is a man whose inordinate faith in his own abilities is matched only by an incompetence which will surely doom his business career to failure. Much of the humour derives from the bizarre nouvelle cuisine dishes he takes a perverse pleasure in devising. (Saveloy on a bed of lychees, anyone?) When Aubrey's business does not work out as well as he hoped he takes refuge in alcohol.The film is as much about Andy's home life as his work life, if not more so. His two daughters, although twins, are completely unlike both in looks and in character. Natalie, crop-haired and chunky, is a tomboy who works as a plumber and spends her leisure time playing pool and drinking with her male workmates. Nicola, who is unemployed, is extremely thin, a sufferer from bulimia and a chain-smoker. Whereas Natalie is relatively placid, Nicola is neurotic, bitter, foul-tempered and much given to hurling abuse at her family and acquaintances. She claims to believe in various left-wing causes- "capitalist!" is her favourite insult for her father because of his business ambitions- but never does anything active to further them. Natalie does not appear to have any romantic interests in her life- none of her male drinking chums count as boyfriends, and although some have seen her as a stereotypically "butch" lesbian, she has no girlfriends either. Nicola, by contrast, has an active sex life, although a rather odd one- she likes her rather reluctant boyfriend to smear chocolate spread over her chest.The two acting performances which really stand out come from Spall as Aubrey- a brilliant comic creation- and Jane Horrocks as Nicola, an equally brilliant tragi-comic one. The film is, however, really an good example of ensemble acting, and there are also great contributions from Steadman as Wendy and Broadbent as Andy.With its general theme of frustrated ambition and a character as unbalanced as Nicola, "Life is Sweet" could easily have been made as a tragedy. Yet that title is not meant ironically. Leigh might not be a large-C Conservative, but this film suggests that he is a small-c conservative when it comes to family values, and the film is very much about family life. For all their eccentricities, the family at the centre of "Life is Sweet" is not intended to be portrayed as a dysfunctional one. It is a family that functions, although in ways that outsiders might perceive as strange. The sensible, steadfast Wendy and Andy, who beneath some surface peculiarities is a deeply caring man, have an unconditional love for their daughters. They are prepared to make allowances for Nicola's behaviour, which is the result of emotional insecurities rather than spitefulness or malevolence. "We don't hate you! We bloody love you, you stupid girl!" (We learn that Wendy got pregnant with the twins as an unmarried teenager but refused to have an abortion because of a belief in the sanctity of life).After all the storms, the film ends on a note of calm and hopefulness. This is one of the most distinctive, and one of the best, British social comedies from the early nineties. 8/10

robt135 Just one of those films that is subjectively sublime. Honestly portrayed people just doing stuff and some of it going wrong and some of it going OK. Not sneering but celebrating a certain way of life, and so becoming a celebration of all our lives - maybe this borders into objectivity?Funny and joyful - with what could pass as tragedy, but still funny. Plenty of the inter-personal stuff that is so often missed in pursuit of consensus cinema. The actors just appear like people that are just there - not acting but just doing things. Reminded me of crying with laughter after getting caught putting dog-dirt (maybe not familiar with that term?) in my Grandad's petrol tank on the estate - kind of thing - like I say - subjective.