Wondrous Oblivion

Until Lagaan: Once upon a Time in India, successful cricket movies were as rare as England victories once were over the West Indies. But this rite-of-passage tale has more in common with The Final Test or P'Tang, Yang, Kipperbang than the Oscar-nominated Bollywood blockbuster. The problem is that writer/director Paul Morrison can't decide whether to focus on 11-year-old Sam Smith's desire to silence bullying schoolboys by improving his batting skills or on his Jewish mother Emily Woof's crush on Caribbean neighbour Delroy Lindo. Moreover, instead of tackling racial prejudice in suburban London in the early 1960s, Morrison opts for a cosy feel-good approach that neither charms nor convinces.