Swimming with Men is a British comedy based on the script of the 2010 Swedish documentary Men Who Swim and seems to follow a similar vein to that of the French film Sink or Swim that was also recently released. Why is male synchronised swimming trending in popularity at the cinema? Forget Big Oil or Big Pharma, Big Swimming Pool is the real conspiracy going on. Anyway, I'm just going to go ahead and say that I really enjoyed the film. It was delightfully silly, despite its many flaws.
The film follows the main protagonist Eric (portrayed by Rob Brydon), as he struggles internally with his work and home life, only finding solace and peace in the swimming pool, where he comes across a men's synchronised swimming club.
Swimming with Men looks at the mid-life crisis, as well as the limitations of masculine expectations. Realistically, the film doesn't go too deeply into these themes, but with a team of eight swimmers, each comes with their own independent issues that they are struggling to come to terms with and overcome. It's interesting to see these men meeting up every week to perform this cathartic process, while at the same time feeling so much shame about it that they have an arbitrary rule book that explains they are not allowed to tell people about the club (Fight Club anyone?), and can't talk about their personal lives. It's a great metaphor for the male roles in society where we have long been expected to always be the strength in any relationship with no sign of weakness and no ability to express emotions. An outlook that has potentially led to a drastic increase in male suicides in the last decade. So it is nice to see a film trying to place value in things usually considered explicitly feminine.
Of course over the run of the film, you can expect these men to come across obstacles that will require them to open up to each other or face the collapse of the team as a whole, and that brings the most emotional engagement with the audience. This is by far the best part of the film. The latter half of the film is unfortunately taken up with a competition element, at which point it becomes a very by-the-numbers sports film.
The casting choices were okay. Rupert Graves and Charlotte Riley bring the standout performances and have some good chemistry on screen, but the rest of the cast (including Daniel Mays, Adeel Akhtar, Thomas Turgoose, Jim Carter, and Nathaniel Parker) aren't really given enough content and backstory to really shine. In fact, it feels like there was much left on the cutting room floor, as there are a few supporting character subplots that seem to be set up, but not followed through on.
Rob Brydon is really the oddest character in this film. The way his character is written makes him unlikeable, and much of his humour is rather dry, which makes him the complete opposite of his usual style of character. Not too sure why his character was the primary protagonist. Graves could have actually been a better choice; even though his backstory was "worse", he was still a much more charismatic character.
There's nothing overly brilliant about this film. It doesn't develop it's characters much and loses a lot of potential greatness with the presence of the competition, which pulls away from the emotional arcs. Still, it's very light-hearted with some variable cinematography and reasonable humour. Not brilliant, but I still very much enjoyed it.