Clubland

Brenda Blethyn's histrionic inclination to overact doesn't really need the guiding hand of a an empathic director. It needs Stalin's rod of iron to rein her back.

Unfortunately, director Cherie Nowlan is no Uncle Joe. She's certainly no Lenin either. In fact, she makes Captain Mainwaring appear the model of discipline.

As a result, Blethyn is allowed to run amok in a scenery-chewing display that would draw admiring glances from the likes of Donald Sinden or Rod Steiger.

She plays Jean Dwight, a blousy, British-born divorced mother to the sexually-awakening Tim (Chittenden) and the mentally-impaired Mark (Wilson).

By day she works in a factory canteen but by night she transforms herself into "Melbourne's raunchiest homemaker", a club comedienne who can count Morcambe & Wise and Tommy Cooper among her contemporaries back when she trod the boards in Blighty.

Like the sort of act Peter Kay's Brian Potter would reject at the end of Phoenix Nights, she prowls the stage cracking bawdy gags and banging on about sex - think a potty-minded slapper's Jo Brand. It's not what you'd like to see you mum doing.

Anyway, her home life is shattered when Tim meets Jill (Booth), an elfin beauty with an unsatiable appetite for sex (there's an awful lot of rutting on offer) and - as Jean sees it - a grim determination to break up the happy home.

The role of Jean demands a strong character but Blethyn's overwrought juggernaut crushes all in its path, battering some small but delicately nuanced performances from Chittenden and Booth into the dust.

There's some amusing peripheral characters - Tim's security guard dad and his Conway Twitty obsession - but this is very much Blethyn's show...and, cripes, don't we know it.

At the end of the day, this refusal to relinquish the limelight upsets the movie's balance and we're left with a story slighter than the froth on top of a tube of Fosters.

Tim Evans