Looking for Eric

The British director Ken Loach can be a master of working-class realism, but not in this cranky, rudderless shambles. Eric (Steve Evets), a sad-sack postman from Manchester, has made a mess of his life. Years ago, he ditched his pregnant wife, and he has never recovered from that mistake.

Now, though, he has a savior: the former French soccer superstar Eric Cantona (as himself), who shows up to dispense advice like Humphrey Bogart in Play It Again, Sam. Looking for Eric, with its noisy bloke bluster, hardly sticks to this conceit — or, really, to anything else. It's a kitchen sink full of dirty dishes that don't match.

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