Little Voice (1998)
Writtem and directed by Mark Herman

If you're a sucker for Full Monty~Muriel's Wedding-style heartwarmers—British people saying funny things, odd people falling in love, all that shit—Little Voice certainly hits all the right buttons. But if you're like me, you may wonder, "Why must the people in these films always have a homing pigeon collection, or whatever?"

Perhaps we need the movies to show us that every weirdo in the world eventually manages to find a suitable mate. This one is about a girl so grief-stricken that she can only connect with the world by obsessively listening to her dead father's record collection and imitating the singers' voices. And of course, she manages to meet, through a random visit by a phone repair crew, the aforementioned shy, beautiful man with the pigeon collection, and they both instantly understand each other because they are "outsiders."

Well let me tell you this; I'm a fucking outsider too and I don't meet anyone regardless of how many phones I go and repair. Granted, I am not a phone repairman, and inevitably my work results in breaking the phones irreparably, but even so, you'd think I'd get me some pussy by now.

So anyway, this film is cutesy and tender and eccentric and all that. Great for dates. Jane Horrocks is fantastic, as she always is, as are Michael Caine and Jim Broadbent, as they always are, with the exception of Michael Caine in Club America. The film gets kind of weird toward the end, rather dark and unnecessarily violent, but it all works out. I would have appreciated something other than birds as a motif, though. I mean, okay, I get it, birds are free! Enough already.

Review by Lyle Carlson-Kitchens