There's Only One Jimmy Grimble

Jimmy is at school in Manchester and plays football. He has ability and freezes on the pitch; the older boys bully him at every opportunity. One day an old woman gives him a pair of old boots, saying they belonged to a player who once turned out for Manchester City. Wearing them he is a different player. Then the boots go missing. John Hay directs. Lewis McKenzie plays Jimmy, Robert Carlyle plays his teacher and Gina McKee his mother, with Ray Winstone in the cast. The idea is to make the question of confidence concrete. There is nothing magical about the boots and the film does not hide it; what Jimmy needs is a reason, and the reason arrives in the shape of an object. Manchester is inside the narrative. The football identity of the city, the difference between United and City and the position of school teams are direct material. Robert Carlyle's games teacher is the best written thing in it; the man loads his own disappointment onto the boys and the film does not correct him. The second strand is the mother's relationship and the tension at home, which is harder than the children's film shape. It circulated in Britain as a family film and was shown in schools. Who it is for: viewers who like British football films and sports stories centred on children. Who it is not for: the template is entirely predictable, the ending goes where it is expected to, and some characters are clichés.