Rumble in the woods

Tim Firth, the writer of Calendar Girls, is also credited with the script of Blackball, an attempt to do for the whoosh of wood across manicured lawn what Strictly Ballroom did for the thump of pasa doble on parquet.

I can think of only two explanations for its comprehensive badness. Either the director, Mel Smith, went through the script, carefully

excising all the funny lines, or Firth sub-contracted the writing chores to his accountant.

The film stars Paul Kaye as a mouthy painter and decorator who causes a rumble in Torquay by winning a local bowls tournament - much to the annoyance of its regular constituency of stuffed poloshirts and anally-retentive driving instructors.

Johnny Vegas flounders about as Kaye's tumbledown best friend, Alice Evans does her best with the unenviable task of providing the romantic interest, and James Cromwell (the farmer from Babe) is madly miscast as her tyrannical father, the captain of the bowls club.

For someone who was supposedly born on a housing estate in Devon, his vowels are suspiciously transatlantic.

Only Vince Vaughan - looking as if he hasn't had a decent night's sleep since Psycho - manages to make something of the material, supplying a raucous turn as Kaye's unscrupulous American agent.

The film offers a handful of faintly amusing gags at the expense of the sport and its players. There is a cute moment, for instance, involving a tiny picket fence that forms a boundary to the club's VIP enclosure.

But the most energetic work seems to have gone into the product placement. There's a touch of this in Calendar Girls, which a flight to LA becomes a shameless plug for Virgin Atlantic.

Here, however, Firth has allowed these moments to colonise his script: an entire scene forms an infomercial for the Savoy Hotel; a gag at the climax of the movie revolves around the triumphant production of a Nike shirt; several minutes are given over to the hero's participation in an advert for Coca-Cola.

Someone ought to tell him that the ads are supposed to be over once the film has started.

Blackball
Cert: cert15