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Brassed Off
Metascore
60 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 19 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 19
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 19
  3. Negative: 1 out of 19
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  1. The New Republic
    Reviewed by: Stanley Kauffmann
    100
    Herman handled his script cleanly and cast the picture well. [09Jun1997 Pg 30]
    All this critic's reviews
  2. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    Brassed Off is a sweet film with a lot of anger at its core.
  3. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Peter Stack
    75
    The characters are beautifully drawn in this bittersweet melodrama written and directed by Mark Herman.
  4. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Susan Wloszczyna
    75
    The pitch of the script, written by director Mark Herman, isn't perfect. But these earthy blokes are an engaging lot, the soot of the earth, with an admirably wry view of their bleak situations. [23May1997 Pg 03.D]
    All this critic's reviews
  5. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    75
    Brassed Off! is a traditional feel-good motion picture with an element of social commentary thrown in for good measure.
  6. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    70
    Brassed Off is shamelessly manipulative and sentimental, but in an agreeably familiar way.
  7. Variety
    Reviewed by: Derek Elley
    70
    This well-played, often very sparky dramedy about the shenanigans in a northern brass band composed of miners threatened with pit closure gets a bad attack of social realism in the latter stages that rocks the crowded craft.
  8. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Lisa Alspector
    70
    The music's great, but frequent tight shots of actors ostensibly blowing their horns look phony enough to be distracting.
  9. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Russell Smith
    67
    In the end, though, the undeniable power and emotional richness of this film swing the balance toward the good.
  10. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    67
    There's a double meaning in the title of this folksy, relentlessly political, heavy-handed story, written and directed by Mark Herman and set among the coal mines of Yorkshire, England, in 1992.
  11. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    60
    If you're in a triumph of the human spirit frame of mind, this is your cup of dark, sweet tea.
  12. Empire
    Reviewed by: Ian Freer
    60
    However, writer-director Mark Herman never really achieves the correct balance between the serious and the feelgood, allowing an uneasy tone to prevail, while the small screen style and supporting cast of familiar TV faces suggests this would play more comfortably on the box.
  13. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    60
    Brassed Off gets bogged down in sentimentality; and that political agenda is spread on thick.
  14. San Francisco Examiner
    Reviewed by: Walter Addiego
    50
    Writer-director Mark Herman seems genuinely moved by the plight of the mining communities, but his attempt to translate those feelings into a story shows the effects of hard labor.
  15. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    50
    As well-meaning elegies go, especially ones to working stiffs prematurely ripped from their subterranean roots, Brassed Off is the pits: It's a miner opus in a minor key.
  16. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    50
    Herman isn't sure if he's doing a big-statement picture or a tiny treasure of a comedy, and his confusion throws Brassed Off off balance.
  17. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: John Anderson
    50
    The difficulty is that Brassed Off operates at an emotional pitch that starts at a crescendo and never relents--rendering almost everything equally inconsequential.
  18. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Stephen Hunter
    50
    An odd duck of a movie, it's really a British Labor Party television commercial bitterly shoehorned into the cheesy format of an American triumph fantasy, with a horn section.
  19. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    30
    Trimmed to an hour, and tucked between a documentary on snails and an episode of Coronation Street, writer-director Mark Herman's Brassed Off could prove lively watching indeed. As it is, however, his pedestrian if sweetly well-meaning inspirational about a coal-mining town done in by Thatcherism is too long, too laborious and 15 years too late.
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