Film Review: The Beautiful Game takes a light shot at heavy topics - that goes wide

The Beautiful Game.

• The Beautiful Game
• ★★★☆☆
• Netflix

It’s coming home, it’s coming home....The Beautiful Game (PG) stars Bill Nighy as Mal, a veteran coach who devotes his retirement to managing England’s team of homeless footballers.

When the Homeless World Cup rolls around, Mal jets off to Rome with his team of wide-eyed hopefuls, among them Kevin (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), Nathan (Callum Scott Howells) and Vinny (Michael Ward), where much of the action takes place off the field and revolves around the brilliant Vinny’s struggle to understand that his remarkable talent must be harnessed to the team’s greater good.

Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and directed by Thea Sharrock, The Beautiful Game is a sweet-natured romp that is certainly well-intentioned in the way it celebrates the coming together of individuals who are in the process of overcoming a variety of traumas in their personal lives, which include heroin addiction and learning to live as a war refugee.

The story doesn’t dig beneath the surface of those traumas, however, and Bill Nighy’s performance, as he glides through proceedings effortlessly patching up a series of squabbles and misunderstandings, pretty much sums up the film’s tone.