I was predisposed to dislike this film but was pleasantly surprised. The title, which is the worst thing about it, is a euphemism for a profanity describing a state of anger or, to use a parallel euphemism, being "ticked off." "Brassed off" supposedly refers to the same state when its main representatives are members of a big brass band. And it's a pro-Labor anti-Tory tract written in the time-honored tradition of political tracts that view the opposition—in this case the United Kingdom's Thatcher Government which I generally admire—as the source of all ills and evils.

But it turns out that this is a surprisingly tender and heart-warming film trying to do its best for the family and humanistic values in a post-Christian vortex. The setting is the fictitious English town of Grimley, one of the few remaining coal-mining towns in the realm, where a thousand miners are being offered "redundancy," meaning payoffs to go quietly into the night of unemployment so the mine—though still profitable—can be closed in favor of nuclear power. Into town comes a surveyor fresh from college, Gloria (Tara Fitzgerald), who works for the hated power structure but is really on the side of the colliery workers. She meets up with her high school beau Andy Barrows (Ewan MacGregor, who just happens to be the only handsome bloke in this town), and though they try to rekindle the old flame, the fact that she's on the wrong side politically keeps him from really getting into it.

The delight of this little film is the brass band, which apparently is portrayed by a real comparable brass band that competes with others across England. Its music is heavenly, and I can't imagine a dry eye in the house when they play "Danny Boy" outside the window of the hospital ward where their director is at death's door. Besides Gloria and Andy, the film also has a complete and heart-wrenching story between the band director (Pete Postlethwaite), a disabled retired miner with black lung, and his grown son (Stephen Tomkinson) whose own family life is in crisis.

There are shades of Norma Rae wrapped into The Music Man, a wee smidgen of Spetters (the Dutch film that had a brass band, too)...maybe even a little of How Green Was My Valley, but who goes back that far? It's formulaic, but it's been so long since I've seen the formula well used that I liked it a lot anyway. Unfortunately, it's in the British tongue with no American subtitles—any American news documentary always provides those now when accents as heavy as these are used. But on the other hand, the R-rated language is much less offensive when it doesn't sound so R-rated. The most popular seven-letter word in Grimley is almost cute when it sounds like they're invoking a Chinese ruler.... Apart from that and a joke about Gloria's anatomy, there's nothing here unsuitable for all members of the family.