Things To Do Before You’re Thirty (2003)

In 1983 Don Robson (George Innes), known as The Don, started a boys football team called Athletico Greenwich. Twenty years later six of the lads are still playing for the team, but things have got so much more complicated. As the five hundredth game approaches they still love football, but real life is getting in the way.

Cass (Dougray Scott), the team’s top scorer on and off the pitch, isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood with Kate (Emilia Fox) the love of his life. Adam (Shaun Parkes) still hasn’t told the rest of the team he’s gay. Colin (Bruce Mackinnon) is desperate to have a threesome even though he’s just started going out with the lovely Vicky (Billie Piper). Dylan (Jimi Mistry) is in love with the woman his father is about to marry. Billy (Roger Morlidge) is trying to save his marriage. Johnny (Danny Nussbaum) is not ready to accept the fact that The Don who started the team all those years ago, is dying.

This is a funny, life affirming and moving tale of people trying to live their complicated adult lives in the cosmopolitan and exciting city that is twenty first century London, while hoping to hang on to their youth. It’s not a film about football – we never see a ball being kicked. This is a film about how life is messy and funny and confusing, and the realisation that the only thing that makes it worth living is the rarest of things - real, undying, unconditional friendship.