'Sixty Six'

Rating:

BY RAFER GUZMÁN | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

August 1, 2008

PLOT A British boy’s bar mitzvah falls on the same day as England’s unlikely entry into the World Cup Final.

CAST Eddie Marsan, Helena Bonham Carter, Gregg Sulkin

LENGTH 1:34

PLAYING AT Village East Cinema and UA 64th Street and Second Avenue, Manhattan

BOTTOM LINE This comedy-drama is wafer-thin, but Marsan gives it some heft as an all-too-human father.

The British comedy "Sixty Six" (PG-13) tells the woeful tale of 12-year-old Bernie Rubens, a bespectacled nobody who hopes his bar mitzvah will transform him into a fabulous somebody. But it turns out England's underdog football team unexpectedly makes it to the World Cup Final - to be held on the very date of Bernie's big celebration.

That's it - the entire premise. Directed by Paul Weiland and supposedly based on his own disastrous 1966 bar mitzvah, "Sixty Six" is as thin as a matzo, slightly sweeter but often just as dry. In its final minutes, however, the film offers some surprising nourishment.

It comes less from Bernie (first-time actor Gregg Sulkin) than from his long-suffering father, Manny. Played by the excellent Eddie Marsan (last seen as the memorably nasty bank robber in " Hancock"), Manny quietly grits his teeth against multiple misfortunes: an ulcer, a failing business and worse. There's no villain in "Sixty Six," unless you count God. But Manny does have one blessing: a lovely, loyal wife (Helena Bonham Carter).

A few mildly quirky characters, including a kindly doctor played by Stephen Rea, and a couple of good lines (Bernie dreams of having "the Jesus Christ of bar mitzvahs") don't add up to a complete movie. Eventually, though, Manny saves the day for his son, and for us.