AIBU to think that Rita, Sue and Bob Too isn’t a laugh riot of a film?

[StanfordPines]

There was a Facebook post a little while ago about the film Rita, Sue and Bob Too. Lots of people were commenting about what a funny film is was.
I commented that while it is a fantastic film and certainly has a humorous side to it I wouldn’t say it was a funny film. I was told that I was without a sense of humour. I said that I didn’t find a grown man having sex with underage girls to be super funny and was told that that is just how it was then and it was fine.
I deleted my comments and walked away.
I’m the same age as Rita and Sue. It wasn’t how things were then and it wasn’t fine.

AIBU to think that while it is a great film comments like ‘such a funny film’ and ‘you wouldn’t be allowed to make that today’ are just missing the point?

(I know it’s Facebook and I haven’t taken it to heart but was I wrong?)

Regardless of any discussion around whether it's right or wrong, I'm late 30s and there were loads of girls having sex under 16 when I was at school. Usually around 14/15 and that would 99% of the time be with boys who were older.

I do think that there is a difference between a young man still in his teens and a mid 30s man for sure. Context is everything. I also think it's a fair consideration that actually 20/30 years ago a lot of teen girls would want to lose their virginity (rather than being groomed which is a completely different conversation) and there would be some individuals that would be happy to oblige and see no wrong doing in that.

It’s a brilliant piece of writing but the film played for laughs and rewrote the ending. Andrea Dunbar was excluded from the filming and large parts were rewritten including the ending. She write from experience, she had her first birth at 15 although the baby died and I think she had another before she was 18. She didn’t make much money off her plays and was attacked locally for giving the area a bad reputation. For me the film represents her experience, I remember very similar both contemporaneously and also when I was still in my twenties and working on estates. It also represents how she got fucked over by both the abusive men in her life and arts pricks who feted her while othering her and revealing in her problems.

It's funny in places, but my overriding memory is of Sue's home, and her alcoholic violent dad. I wouldn't watch it again, as I'm sure I'd experience it as even more bleak with middle aged perspective.
As far as an older man having sex with two underage girls, this wasn't particularly shocking to me when I watched it as a teenager, because these sort of things did happen in mine and my friends experience. I don't know if they still do...

I saw it in the 80s as a teenager and found it grim, especially Bob.

Never understood the appeal of it.

Hated it when it first saw it (teenage girl in northern city in 80s) and still hate it. I remember thinking the guy was creepy.

So often i used to laugh my way through films the first time i saw them in the cinema, like The Snapper and East is East, and then years later i saw them on tv and thought sharon was raped! The Dad is an abusive tyrant!

I like the film. What stands out for me is the indomitable spirit of Sue and Rita when they are a pair. I see it as a celebration of their friendship - things go wrong for them when they are estranged, but once reunited they are back in control of their lives.

Rita and Sue left school in the course of the film so they'd have been 15 or 16 depending on when their birthdays fell. I think they saw Bob's more middle-class home, in an affluent area, as posh and exciting - an escape from their grim homes on a bleak estate.

Arguably, Bob took advantage of this and his behaviour would undoubtedly be seen as 'grooming' today, but the film isn't played like that because times have changed. It's played as Rita and Sue being just as keen to have sex with Bob as he was with them, but the film reveals that their dynamic only really works as a threesome.

Always thought it was pervy. Not only was Bob grooming and abusing teenage girls , he was also cheating on his wife. And he had kids too.
Thought the whole thing was grim , seedy and sleazy. But that was the adults creation. The girls tried to find happiness together.
And what is funny about a gang bang? I felt very disturbed, even when I saw it in the 80s

The writer based it on he own experiences and the estate and school it was set in was where she lived and went to school, I think it's a brilliant film ,funny in parts but also quite poignant,she had an extremely hard life and died at the age of 29 from a brain haemorrhage,her daughter's also didn't have an easy life .

Yes, the cookery money scene is hilarious, I also love, "make your own fucking tea".

I used to find it funny, I don’t now but I do ‘get it’. It’s an amazing film and depicts Thatcher’s Britain and how vulnerable girls from poor backgrounds see themselves, and how others exploit them.
Andrea Dunbar was an incredibly talented writer for her age

Sorry meant to say, parts are dark but other parts are dark and hilarious

I can hardly remember it but I can remember I found it creepy and upsetting but I was judging from the viewpoint as a teen viewer. Not every working class teenager from 'the norf' as PP put it finds the same things acceptable or relatable.

I think it’s a great film and an honest film

It certainly has funny scenes but it’s dark no one wants their life their is nothing to aspire to

It's an excellent film, there are some funny moments but I never considered it a comedy.

I've always found it really dark, some funny moments yes but the whole mood is dark to me.

The writer Andrea Dunbar had a shit life. She grew up and died on the estate where RSABT was filmed. Single mum of three, each with a different dad. She had an alcohol problem. She collapsed of a brain haemorrhage in the ladies loo if the pub in the first scene of RSABT when she was 29 or 30.

Her kids lives weren't msuch better. Her oldest was a heroin addict and was in and out of prison on drugs charges, but the worst was she was her toddler got hold of her methadone and drank some and died, and the mother charged with manslaughter I think it was. This daughter was mixed race, her father was Asian and was often victim to racist behaviour from others on the estate.

The second daughter had a better life in that she was more stable, was happily married with a couple of kids but died at 30 of cancer.

Not sure how her son turned out.

I remember it when it came out. It was considered shocking then but I also grew up in the North and it was a film of the times.

In my school (80s) a lot of 14 -15 year old girls had older boyfriends who were in their 20s who picked them up from school in their cars. Having an older boyfriend was a thing to brag about. My friend went out with an 18 year old sixth former when she was 12. I mean FFS. I don't think they had penetrative sex but they certainly did "other things".

But that was how it was then, like it or not. I can remember when Jonathan Ross started going out with his now wife. He must've been 30 or late 20s, she was 16. Noone turned a hair.

I wonder if some of these men now wake up in a cold sweat at night remembering what they did?

There’s always at least one poster on these threads who comes on and does the “my experience was different so therefore it never happened to anyone”. Don’t know if it’s denial or just self-centeredness to think that their experience is the only truth.

My best friend at school had a really tough upbringing and went through similar “relationships” with family friends and men her mum knew. Hell- at my all girls grammar school the deputy head master who was in his 40s was married to a girl that he’d been teaching until two years previously. We all used to think it was really funny that we knew his wife as a pupil/ contemporary and she then emerged as the Deputes wife.

Looking back it was grim and hopefully attitudes have changed now. At my dd’s school there is much less tolerance of age gaps and the boys are shunned/ mocked if they have much younger girlfriend.

"Parents who didn’t care and teachers who didn’t notice. "

This would have fuelled the gossips were I lived but no-one would have stopped it, or stopped talking to Bob because of it. The girls would have gotten treated badly and called for everything, though. Society didn't care about young women, male entitlement to their bodies, mattered more.

I'm the same age as Rita and Sue. Young teens were fair game and it was the time of the 'wild child'/ Bill Wyman dating 14 year old Mandy Smith, the French politician dating a 13 year old and David Bowie/Mick Jagger telling tales of groupies from 13. The girls were blamed and condemned if they got pregnant. It took until the late 90's for attitudes to slowly change. I think it's stood the test of time because of Rita and Sue, who are both brilliant actresses and were both good in Coronation Street and Emmerdale, in the 80's/90's and have gone on to lasting acting careers.

I always thought it was a grim film. The way he takes advantage of those girls turns my stomach. I’ve seen it once and wouldn’t watch it again because it left me feeling genuinely disturbed, and I’m not someone who is super sensitive. I’ve watched all sorts but that film is just gross.

I found it both shocking and funny when I saw it at the time. Then I watched it again a few years later (mid 90s or so) and while I still laughed, I felt uncomfortable with finding it funny, if that makes sense.

I haven't watched it again, as I don't think I'd be able to get past the whole schoolgirls and married man scenario. I struggle now to understand why I was ok with it at the time. Maybe because it seemed very raw, real and cutting edge and yet completely outside my own experience of being a teenager. The two main actresses were, and still are, fantastic and contributed hugely to making the film very watchable at the time.

I guess, more than anything, I'm glad my viewpoint has shifted and continues to do so in many different areas as the years go by.

"I can remember when Jonathan Ross started going out with his now wife. He must've been 30 or late 20s, she was 16. Noone turned a hair."

Billy Piper (17 when dating) married at 18 to 35 year old Chris Evans. He sent her a £100k car to ask her to marry him, she didn't even have a provisional license because of her age. She looked like a kid as well.

Jesus @Aprilx - I’m from just down the road from you in Middleton, born in 1972, and it was certainly going on at my school. The year I finished my GCSE (first ever cohort) there were 15 girls in my year pregnant, and two were married. One girl was sleeping with a PE teacher and there were several who had boyfriends in their late twenties and early thirties. I didn’t live on a council estate but 75% of my school did and that film was a hugely accurate snapshot of what life was like for them.

The film is funny though, and the girls, and even Bob in his way are endearing. That’s the genius of it though, it portrays something very dark and upsetting in a light and amusing way. Don’t forget this is how it happens, it’s a bit of a laugh, just normal, girls all being grown up, all the time with them not understanding they way they’re being groomed and exploited.

Being all black and white about the film is not helpful, and it’s certainly not what the film was made to achieve. The film is funny and engaging and disturbing and upsetting all at the same time, and for me it’s an amazing piece of film making.