The Parole Officer Details

This latest attempt to restore faith in British cinema is a light, old-fashioned bank-job comedy in the Ealing vein. While it's a departure for Australian director John Duigan, who made his name with dramas The Year My Voice Broke and Flirting, this is a natural step for Steve Coogan, well established on TV as Alan Partridge, Paul and Pauline Calf and others. Parole officer Simon Garden is less frenetic and cutting edge than his previous creations, but that also makes him more immediately sympathetic. In a nice setup, Simon must convince the only three ex-lags he has successfully put on the straight and narrow (Om Puri, Ben Miller, Steve Waddington) to return to crime and help him steal a videotape from a bank vault and thus clear his name, as he's been framed by bent cop Stephen Dillane. It's undemanding, but well told, and peppered with smart lines. Ignore people who go on about “the rollercoaster scene”, the film's nod to fashionable US gross-out orthodoxy. What makes The Parole Officer worth seeing is what made Knowing Me Knowing You, The Paul Calf Video Diary and the rest such vital bits of television: Coogan. The Americans won't go for it — but that just proves he's not Mr Bean.

Slapdash, bumbling comedy of low ambition.