It's 1968. Desmond Dekker is singing Israelites on the radio. Girls are wearing mini skirts, Barbara Castle is in the Labour government, and 187 women working for Fords' at the Dagenham car plant are cheesed off because they've been downgraded to unskilled.
However, anyone expecting anything remotely Loach-like only needs to look at the picture above; as you will see, Carry On humour is the keystone to this resolutely jolly (and therefore depressingly dated) film, which attempts to pick up where Calendar Girls left off, with a kind of Daily Mail feminism crossed with Socialism via The Sun. It also reminded me of The Boat That Rocked, and that is definitely not a compliment. Filming the 60s requires more than a cast of familiar faces, a catchy soundtrack, and a couple of cheap double entendres.
There is a strong cast, featuring Sally Hawkins, Bob Hoskins, Rosamund Pike and Geraldine James, but their roles are two dimensional. Granted that attitudes were outmoded then, and that the politicisation of female workers was an important part of the achievement of the Equal Pay Act, I still feel that this Full Monty for Women approach is counter-productive, especially since The Full Monty was a much better film. I admire the idea of the film, just not its execution.
