Looking for Eric

Mates at work are worried about the depressed Eric. They organise a kind of therapy session for him. Their leader, Meatballs (John Henshaw), asks each one of them to choose a hero they would most like to turn to for help. Their choices are curious: Sammy Davis Jr, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Frank Sinatra. Eric, meanwhile, chooses Eric Cantona. (Interestingly, not one of these white working-class men chooses a white Englishman as a hero. I wonder: do they all read The Guardian as well?)

Then, one night, Eric is in his bedroom smoking a spliff when up pops Cantona himself. The film manages to move from kitchen-sink realism to bedroom surrealism without missing a beat.

Usually in films, the relationship between the nobody and the celebrity is portrayed as something unhealthy (think of The Fan, or The King of Comedy), but Loach and his screenwriter, Paul Laverty, are less interested in the dark side of celebrity, preferring its comic and comforting potential. I can't help but wonder if that's because Cantona is the kind of footballer artistic and intellectual types like Loach love - because Cantona wants to be just like them. Sub­stitute Beckham and you see how different the film would be.

For those of us not familiar with the Cantona canon, Loach provides old footage of his greatest goals, and we get a long, rhapsodic speech from Eric about the magic of the beautiful game and how football provides the only place where you can drink, sing, shout and express your joy - clearly Eric the postman hasn't been to his local high street on a Saturday night for some time.

Never mind. "The flawed genius and the flawed postman", as Eric describes himself and his new buddy, jog and dance and do the postal rounds together. It's Cantona who provides the life lessons and gnomic aphorisms to help Eric to confront his past and have the courage to win Lily back for a better future. It's footballer as therapist, and it provides the film with its rich comedy. But as an actor, Cantona is a great footballer. He is capable of some nice moments of self-mockery - "I'm not a man, I am Cantona," he says - but, in most scenes, I must say he's rather stiff.

The other main relationship is between Eric and Lily. Their story of how they met at a rock'n'roll dance and his eventual desertion lacks something special to them as a couple - it seems generic. And, just as it looks as if Eric is making progress in reuniting with Lily, the story takes a darker turn that threatens to disrupt their relationship and the tone of the film.

For Eric discovers that his stepson Ryan has been looking after a gun for a local gangster who has threatened violence should Ryan go to the police. During a lovely Sunday dinner with Lily, their daughter and grandchild, the fascist filth of Fatcher's Britain - oops, sorry, wrong era, I mean the boys in blue - burst into the house, looking for a gun, and haul everyone to the local nick. So the story now focuses on the big question: how will Eric deal with the local mobster and his scary dogs?

He turns to Cantona for help, who tells him you "must always trust your team mates" - or, to put it into Loach-speak, working-class solidarity is far superior to the lonely, hegemonic impotence of bourgeois individualism.

The film's rather idealised view of the working class never quite fits the grim reality of its setting. Could it be that the screenwriter, Laverty, doesn't want to spoil the fun by having a bit too much realism, in case the feelgood factor is compromised? But isn't that what Hollywood does? The harsh side of contemporary working-class life is shown through the subplot of guns and gangsters - which is more acceptable than, say, the reality of racism among this section of the working class.

Even so, the film offers guilt-free fun and laughs for football and Loach fans alike.

15, 116 mins