Swimming with Men

Dir: Oliver Parker

2018

*

I’ve been quite vocal over the years about the dislike I have for The Full Monty but compared to Swimming With Men it is a bonafide masterpiece. It is amazing sometimes when a film is so bad that it makes you of your least favorite films suddenly seem appealing – like believing that guy who punched you in the pub last week is an old friend – but that is the effect the film has had on me. I suppose it is because The Full Monty was made during a funny time for British film, it made sense that films were desperately aiming for American audiences but in 2018 shouldn’t we have learned our lesson? Swimming With Men started badly and got considerably worse. Rob Brydon’s a funny man but he is desperately let down here. He plays Eric, a Reginald Perrin sort of character, who is tired of his job and is going through a mid-life crisis. His mid-life crisis isn’t the true to life kind of course, but more of the soap-opera cartoon variety that Hollywood movies and sit-coms have been getting wrong for many, many years. That said, Swimming With Men gets it spectacularly wrong, especially when none of it is justified. Watching a successful accountant, with a corner office, big house, loving family and clearly a sizable salary, ‘suffering’ his success is never going to make an audience warm to him but when he breaks down in such an over the top buffoonish manner – leaving his wife and child to fend for themselves – we’re going to care for him even less. It even more shocking (although it clearly doesn’t realise it) that the reason he leaves his wife is because she has become successful herself as an elected Council member. To wind down after work, Eric enjoys a swim at his local pool. To suggest a ‘stressed’ and ‘busy’ accountant, who has a corner office, has time to swim after work before coming home at a reasonable hour is ridiculous and I think you’d find many less stressed people in London if everyone was able to enjoy such luxuries. While at the pool Eric begins to notice a group of men who always seem to be doing something underwater that he can’t quite make out. He soon discovers that it is an all male synchronized swimming which he ends up joining after many excruciating minutes pretending he isn’t. The group comprises of Rupert Graves (the handsome leader), Daniel Mays (who desperately need to be cast in something better), Thomas Turgoose (who desperately needs Shane Meadows), Jim Carter (old wise one) and Adeel Akhtar (who has gone a long way backwards since the brilliant Four Lions). A good bunch of actors, cheated into a crummy comedy, although I can see how they probably thought they were in something better than they were. The team also has two other members but they’re not famous so aren’t featured much and never speak. The groups first ‘gig’ as it were is performing at a kids birthday party in the rain, which makes you wonder who on earth is writing this utter garbage. They soon hear of a world championship taking place in Italy and begin training after many tedious minutes of them pretending they’re not going to take part. They don’t loose and everything is awesome. While most wives would have divorced their seven month absent husbands by now, Eric’s wife (Jane Horrocks in a role she should have seen coming and thus avoided) is still waiting. She needs to be won back officially though, so the group turn up in their swimming trucks outside her office during a very important meeting and perform a dance outside her window. The only women in the office, standing up to the all male establishment, being danced at by a group of men in tight pants. I’m not sure a film has ever failed to see how bad it is in the history of cinema. Take away the stupid ending and the whole part about Eric leaving his wife and there is a good story there somewhere. The frustrating thing is that this is actually based on a true story. The real Swedish team that we see in the film are the actual team that won the Men's Synchronised Swimming World Championships in 2007. It was made up of a group of men who found Synchronised Swimming as a release from their lives and challenged the notion that the sport is just for women and goes against the concept of masculinity. In fact their case is good in showing up the ridiculous notion of masculinity in general, something ruined by this dreadfully written film. It is a turd in the swimming pool, a verruca on your big toe and the most derivative film I have seen in years. It has no redeeming features whatsoever.