My Beautiful Laundrette

When Lee suggested we rent this one I thought I had already seen it, but it turned out I hadn’t. Must have had it mixed up with something else. Anyway, it is one of the excellent Stephen Frears’ first movies (Dirty Pretty Things, The Grifters, Dangerous Liaisons) and also one of Daniel Day-Lewis’ first appearances. The Rotten Tomatoes site gives it 100%, so I was very hopeful.

There’s not much of a story as such. We follow a Pakistani family and a few others for a few weeks in the less-prosperous districts of London, and then it ends. This sort of thing is fine with me, but I have to care for the characters, and I didn’t, much. The most interesting fellow, and top-billed, was Saeed Jaffrey, who I remember vividly as the Ghurka Billy Fish in The Man Who Would Be King.