Happy Gilmore was a hugely successful 1996 American sports comedy film starring Adam Sandler.
Like most movies of its type, we have a talented rebel clashing with the establishment, a romantic sub-plot, the value of friendship, a rags-to-riches-isn't-always-good theme, and final redemption through sport, in this case golf.
Britain deserved something similar and our excursion into the sports movie world came through an idiosyncratic example of the Britflick. These are films that are often either Oscar-friendly period pieces or low-budget working-class comedy dramas, typically utilising crude humour. Torquay hosted the latter.
And so, in 2003 came a film based on the unlikely sport of bowls. The novelty was that the story was based on the true-life story of a 25-year-old Torquay player by the name of Griff Sanders.
Back in 1998 Griff had offended the Devon Bowls Association by, amongst other offences, wearing non-regulation socks, rolling cigarettes, swearing, drinking lager, and playing while eating a bag of chips. He was subsequently banned for ten years and left out of the Devon first team, despite being the county pairs champion. The story goes that Griff was told not to make a fuss, as ten years was only about a sixth of a bowls player's average playing career. A year later, the authorities allowed his appeal, and Griff went on to make a comeback, winning national titles.
The national media quickly picked up on the clearly excessive decade-long sentence. The newspapers also reinforced the backwards Devon cliché and the ever-popular British narrative of a talented youngster crushed by conservativism and tradition. Griff subsequently became the "self-styled bad boy of British bowls" although he admits, "It doesn't take too much effort to be the bad boy of British bowls, believe me,"
The audience-pleasing potential of the Griff story was recognised by director Mel Smith and screenwriter Tim Firth. Both had good tracks record in comedy: Mel worked on the sketch shows Not the Nine O’Clock News and Alas Smith and Joneswhile Tim would go on to write the scripts for Calendar Girls and Kinky Boots. It was Tim who coined the phrase “sex, drugs, rock and bowls”.
Blackball was subsequently given the green light.
Here’s the movie storyline: Torquay painter and decorator Cliff Starkey (Paul Kaye, TV's Dennis Pennis and Thoros of Myr in Game of Thrones) is proficient at crown green bowls. The local bowls club, however, can't stand him, due to his admittedly obnoxious behaviour and flouting of long-established rules and traditions. Particularly hostile is the fifteen-year-running bowls champion and president Ray Speight (James Cromwell of LA Confidential and The Green Mile). Somewhat predictably Cliff also develops a relationship with Ray’s daughter (Alice Evans).
Cliff is banned from competing in the sport for fifteen years for writing an expletive on an opponent's scorecard but is picked up by sports agent Rick Schwartz (Vince Vaughn of Wedding Crashers and Jurassic Park). Our bowling prodigy is then rebranded as the ‘bad boy of bowls’ and the sport becomes a lucrative attraction. Uniting the social classes, ages, and contrasting lifestyles, Cliff and Ray take on Australia's unbeaten Doohan brothers in one-off tournament, The Ashes. The final match features half-time cheerleaders, neon lights, mascots, and over enthusiastic crowds, all so very far away from the sedate lawns of Torquay’s bowling fraternity.
Can Cliff inspire the England bowling team to victory over the `undefeatable' Australians? Can he handle the pressure? Will he get the girl and reconcile with his lifelong friend Trevor (Johnny Vegas)?
So, what of the real-life Griff’s involvement?
Interviewed by the Guardian in 2003 Mel described taking Griff to the L'Etoile restaurant in London's Charlotte Street. Griff, who wore his working-class background as a badge of honour, read the menu upside down.
“I think it was a kind of double bluff," said Mel. "He's not as thick as he sometimes wants you to think he is. The way he talks leads you to make assumptions about him, and I think sometimes he plays on that.”
Blackball was filmed by a 60-strong film crew in Torquay during October and November 2002, while interiors were shot on the Isle of Man for economic reasons.
Griff was there during filming, "I told them lots of stuff and they wrote it down. I watched them shooting it for a few days, just checking that Paul was playing me right, and he seemed to be spot on. I didn't bother too much about the bowls details, because Mel told me the bowls wasn't important. The film was about a rebel battling against the stuffed shirts, and that's me."
The support cast is full of recognisable faces, including Bernard Cribbins, Kenneth Cranham, Imelda Staunton, James Fleet, Tony Slattery; with small roles for Mark Little and Jon Snow. The soundtrack features Queen, Eddie and the Hotrods, Madness, U2, and The Who.
The location was the same Torquay club from which Griff was banned, the King's Bowls Club, where the clubhouse gained a makeover and was temporarily renamed The Royal Torquay Bowls Club. Members gamely joined in as extras and some of the filming took place on the actual green where the illicit chips were consumed.
On release, the film had mixed reviews though many viewers were more favourable; in the first week Blackball made it to number five in the Top 10 films.
The Radio Times scored Blackball 1 out of 5, commenting that "the laughs here are way off target." Rotten Tomatoes scored the film at 41% based on 22 reviews. The BBC gave the film 2 out of 5 stars though Empire Online described "A quintessentially British concoction, but a charming one at that. Good performances and a witty script add up to an entertaining, if whimsical, film."
Admittedly, Blackball is not gritty, groundbreaking or sophisticated, though there is a good cast and there are genuinely funny moments, “He was a national bowling champion aged 45: too much, too young”.
It may be that the film suffered from misplaced expectations, not helped by the promotional material and the trailers. We still churn out great comedy material for television, but when it comes to the big screen all that potential and talent can become diluted or just misunderstood.
One common theme in viewer reviews is that the main character should be the expected endearing underdog, someone the audience can root for. Cliff, however, is arrogant, unlikeable, constantly angry, with a chip on his shoulder. Throughout the film he doesn't seem to grow or change for the better.
Away from its British roots the film made even less of an impact, not helped in the United States by being retitled National Lampoons Blackball. This confused audiences expecting a Chevy Chase tenpin bowling movie rather than a gentler English lawn bowls film. Our American cousins paid to see a crude laugh-out-loud Kingpin or American Pie and got a low-key seaside Brassed Off.
Blackball is amusing but never constantly hilarious. It could even be viewed as a look back at a gentler era as it a sometimes feels as though it was made twenty years before it was.
So maybe approach Blackball as a satire of sport, propriety, pop stardom, and fan culture circling a light-hearted love story. Bowls was never going to become the new rock'n'roll but that wasn’t the idea. Watch it at the right time and in the right mood and you won’t be disappointed.
