that mother & daughter brawl between Wendy and Nicola alone would propel this movie to my favourites

masterpiece with some outstanding acting from all 4 leads

Life Is Sweet was Mike Leigh's second feature, a tragi-comedy about middle-class ambitions, some over-reaching, some listlessly lacking, most denied fulfillment. And so, about how to react to disappointment. Do you keep fighting? Manage expectations? Withdraw and give up? The characters give us a broad spectrum. While we're mostly following a family with two grown up twins still living at home (fraternal twins, but Claire Skinner and Jane Horrocks really do look like each other, geez), there's an extended subplot about a friend of the family played by Timothy Spall starting a restaurant, and though it's a story that serves as contrast to the rest, he's putting on a funny voice and playing it so broadly as to be a major impediment to one's enjoyment. Much more interesting are the happy-go-lucky parents, Alison Steadman and Jim Broadbent laughing themselves through life lest it drag them down, and the daughters, in particular Horrocks' self-destructive Nicola. Mike Leigh's strength is definitely to present characters you find pretty unlikable, expose their vulnerability, and melt your heart by film's end. And that happens here. Whatever my annoyance with Spall, or other characters' tics and flaws, there's an emotional climax that gets me, and then an ending that isn't one, because life doesn't have movie endings, and you're left living with the characters for a while.