Building on his 10-minute black and white short film Where's The Money Ronnie?, writer/producer/director Shane Meadows sneaks into Kevin Smith/Clerks territory with the BFI-produced Small Time.
Low-budget, amateurish and ambling, it's based around a group of thieving, inner city wasters who "rob from the rich, then sell to the poor at half-price".
They're small-time hoodlums; a gang of adults who've never grown up, arguing with their nagging wives, drinking down the boozer and bringing up their kids off the sales of the 60 tins of dog food they pinched that morning.
Small Time is about how they survive; but while Clerks has characters and dialogue that draw you in, Small Time sadly suffers because of an expletive-laden script that rarely says anything clever.
Still, it's Meadows' first bash at a full-length film. Watch out for his debut feature, Twentyfour Seven (starring Bob Hoskins), which opens at the London Film Festival in November.
