Career Girls

Mike Leigh drama. Two college flat sharing girls meet up six years later. Deals with the passage of time between friends. Traditional Mike Leigh fare. Quality varies from good to mediocre. Let down by OTT stereotype characters who lack credibility. Also they meet an estate agent by coincidence who it turns out that both girls had had an affair with only six years earlier but neither remembers after only six years. I don’t think so. Not really credible in parts.

Very disappointing. Low budget film with poor dialogue I thought. Liberal use of the F word and other cursing doesn't really do it for me. To be truthful gave up on it after 15 mins so it may improve given more time.

This was meant to be a bittersweet story, it was more bitter than sweet, it actually started grating on me, not one of his best films but not one of the worst either.

Almost switched it off - then the characters slowly grew on me. Mike Leigh likes to use unusual characters and studies them in detail. This film, however, has rather little plot line - watchable, nonetheless.

And I speak as a fan...I couldn't quite get the point of this film; two women have a reunion ten years after leaving college, and....umm, talk a lot, go flat-hunting, but no ghastly revelations or skeletons falling out of cupboards. But perhaps that was the point...it's a character study after all, I suppose. Too much drama would undermine that.

To be honest, I found both the female characters a bit tiresome and self-obesessed, with Katrin Cartlidge doing the world's most annoying voice (think Betty from Some Mothers Do Have Em, only worse), and Lynda Steadman totally OTT.

For me, the passing-through male characters were better - Andy Serkis's coke-addled penthouse-dwelling futures trader, the slimey estate agent (who bore an uncanny likeness to James Murdoch), the car-crash-waiting-to-happen Ricky.

Anyway, after much incoherent bitter jabbering (Annie), pathetic whining (Hannah), and several somewhat implausible chance meetings, Hannah goes back to Dewsbury and the credits start rolling. Which had me sitting up and spluttering 'What ? What ?! Is that IT ?!'

I'll say this for Mike Leigh - he always makes London streets look sunny and beguiling. All quietude and twittering sparrows.