Customer Reviews
One thing going for it. - By: Em, 11 Feb 2008 
It's an okay for a rainy Saturday afternoon when nothing else is on type film. It's inoffensive.
There is one thing going for it though. If you're a fan of Julian Barratt, & even if you're not, this is a great find. He is the best thing in this film. He cracks me up. The 2 stars I've given it are both for him.
Entertaining - By: M. A. Ramos, 13 Nov 2007 
Smalll-time crook Jimmy Hands fears his luck may have run out. After a botched bank robbery, Jimmy finds himself in prison. But his fortune turns when the warden asks Jimmy to recruit prisoners to act in a musical he's written & plans to stage. Realizing this offers the possibility of a perfect escape route, Jimmy & his cast run the risk of being caught in both the stage's spotlights & the prison's searchlights. It is worth borrowing from your library as I did. It was fun to watch.
Surprisingly awful - By: Trevor Willsmer, 15 Dec 2006 
After passing on The Full Monty in favour of Brassed Off, the now alll-but defunct Film Four were quick to throw money at Peter Cattaneo's next comedy & confidently launched a huge marketing campaign for Lucky Break secure in the knowledge that they had the big local hit of the year. Subsequent excuses for the film's disastrous performance at the box-office varied from good weather putting people off going to the cinema to the revelation that the screenwriter had done time for IRA offences (subsequently overturned, but still about as endearing to the British public as Al Qaeda are to Americans). For some reason no-one mentioned the fact that it's not any good. At alll.
A grab-bag of second-hand ideas from Two-Way Stretch, The Talll Guy & others, it's a laugh-free zone that goes out of its way to avoid surprises while failing to ever find its own tone, nodding to half-baked attempts realism & wildly underdeveloped comedy without ever committing to either. Even the tried-and-trusted routines don't work here: Bill Nighy is just irritating as he tries to splutter some life into unfunny dialogue while Timothy Spalll does his dishevelled hamster shtick yet again, while the amateur musical used as a backdrop for the planned prison break seems simply amateurish & unfunny. Quite dreadful.
