Rita, Sue and Bob Too Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Rita, Sue and Bob Too Blu-ray Movie Review

Carol, Ted and Alice were already occupied.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 3, 2014

Can you picture Downton Abbey’s emotionally tamped down quasi-villainess O’Brien as a free wheeling teenager? It may not be exactly fair to see Rita, Sue and Bob Too (we’ll conform to the film’s blatantly incorrect orthographic rendering in this review) through that particular lens, but it’s still somewhat unsettling to see Siobhan Finneran, who has become the kind of character audiences love to hate as Downton’s imperious lady’s maid, in a completely different (and much younger) role, in a film which in fact helped to establish Finneran as a force to be reckoned with. That Downton connection may be one of this film’s strongest contemporary marketing points, for Rita, Sue and Bob Too is a highly controversial and probably problematic comedy that isn’t just black—it’s obsidian. Writer Andrea Dunbar adapted two of her own plays to fashion the screenplay of Rita, Sue and Bob Too, offering up a decidedly dark depiction of two lower class teenagers who become involved in a ménage a trois with a married man for whom they have been babysitting. The film is almost impossibly cavalier with its portrayal of how easily these young women jump into the sack (and/or the car seat) with a middle aged husband and father, and for that and several other reasons, Rita, Sue and Bob Too often becomes a squirm-worthy experience that will leave many viewers too shaken and disturbed to ever really laugh much. But despite its putative label as a comedy, it’s obvious that neither Dunbar nor director Alan Clarke sees the film as an outright laugh-fest. This is instead an intentionally provocative attempt to show the gritty underbelly of Thatcher’s Britain, a socioeconomic exposé clad in the skimpy apparel of a traditional sex farce. It is an uneasy combination of ideas, and it makes Rita, Sue and Bob Too a deliberately unsettling experience.

That we’re seeing something less than the nobility, or even the landed gentry, becomes immediately obvious as Rita, Sue and Bob Too tracks the none too steady progress of an obviously very drunk man trying to make his way home. He actually arrives at his destination, at which point his determined young daughter hurriedly exits the family shack to get to somewhere important, zinging past her inebriated father with barely a second glance. This introduction to the family dynamics of Sue (Michelle Holmes) instantly sets an off kilter mood which continues to contrast a kind of bleak comedy with more “kitchen sink drama” angst.

Sue’s best friend is Rita (Siobhan Finneran), and the two are neither especially well educated nor particularly astute in any meaningful way. The two babysit the children of Bob (George Costigan) and his wife Michelle (Lesley Sharp), bopping along to music videos in Bob’s living room without seeming overly concerned about what might be happening with the kids. When Bob and Michelle get back, Michelle pays the girls and tells them Bob will drive him home. Bob has something completely different on his mind, and in one of the film’s most amazingly matter of fact moments, he takes them to a deserted park, propositions them, and proceeds to have sex with both of them. Clarke stages this sequence with an equal amount of farce and a kind of shocking smarminess.

There’s something deliberately askew with Rita, Sue and Bob Too, and I’d be hard pressed to state definitively whether it’s content, tone or a combination of both. There’s such an unabashedly provocative central plot conceit here that it’s almost impossible to even get beyond that to move on to anything else, and yet Clarke doesn’t seem to actually want to comment on the situation, let alone the proceedings, and so we get a kind of litany of sexual encounters punctuated by moments of character drama.

Part of the tonal imbalance in the film is perhaps attributable to the fact that neither Rita nor Sue seem to be on the verge of becoming members of Mensa (so to speak), and so there’s a kind of unseemly subtext where two frankly dunderheaded girls are either taken advantage of or at the very least are dimwittedly complicit in their own moral turpitude. Is that fodder for a sex farce? Maybe it could be, but Clarke and Dunbar seem more interested in giving a quasi-verité account of the hardscrabble lives of the working class than in examining any of the pressing ethical questions that surround the basic setup. Even Bob is given a surprisingly free pass in terms of exegetical commentary by the filmmakers. He’s as much of a loser (maybe more so) as the girls are, but he (again like the girls themselves) is affable enough, even if decidedly wrongheaded. But Rita, Sue and Bob Too seems to want to make the whole sordid situation ingredients for a fluffy soufflé when what is really offered is a very heavy and dense galette. The film never really even approaches laugh out loud humorousness and in fact its overwhelming tone is more one of cheeky resoluteness in the face of a stifling environment.

But maybe that’s the ultimate point of Rita, Sue and Bob Too. These characters are all trapped by the exigencies of life, including the austerity of the Thatcher years. Whether consciously or (more likely) subliminally, perhaps they’ve chosen this three way to infuse a little spark into what is otherwise a decidedly drab existence. Unfortunately, neither Dunbar nor Clarke are explicit enough in what they want to portray or even in what they feel about their characters. The result is a “fly on the wall” perspective for the viewer who may be unsettled enough that they actually hope someone somewhere has a fly swatter.

Rita, Sue and Bob Too Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Rita, Sue and Bob Too is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.67:1. While the elements utilized for this transfer are in generally very good condition, the results are not especially memorable, with an at times very soft and ill defined image, to the point that even some midrange shots are little more than blobs of color in motion, and things like facial features are blurry and hard to distinguish. Colors are generally accurate looking but not especially well saturated. Some of the outdoor location work actually is among the best looking in the film, with a couple of sequences offering above average depth of field. The image is stable throughout, and there are no obvious signs of digital tinkering.

Rita, Sue and Bob Too Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Aside from occasional eighties source cues and some passing ambient environmental sounds, most of Rita, Sue and Bob Too's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track is comprised entirely of smaller scale dialogue scenes. While dialogue is presented clearly, some of the accents are a bit on the thick side and the lack of subtitles may prove problematic for some listeners unaccustomed to the almost alien sounding vowels our working class British cousins can emit.

Rita, Sue and Bob Too Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Isolated Score and Effects Track is presented via DTS-HD Master Audio Mono.


• Audio Commentary by Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman. This is not the most compelling commentary these two have offered, though it has the requisite biographical information on several of the cast and crew.

Rita, Sue and Bob Too Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One of Rita, Sue and Bob Too's greatest assets—the naturalistic performances by the three main actors—may also prove to be one of the reasons some viewers will just not be able to connect with this material. If Dunbar and Clarke had gone for a more highly stylized and satiric take on the material, that may have given viewers enough breathing room to be able to deal with the smarmy undercurrents running through this story. As it stands, the film has an almost insistent naturalism that makes the proceedings extremely uncomfortable at times. This is certainly one of the oddest supposed sex comedies I've personally ever seen, and it should provide some passing interest for Finneran fans. Chalk this one up as one of the more outré offerings on Blu-ray recently, one with a probably niche appeal.