Out of work, scrounger Robert Martin lives with his dysfunctional family - long suffering wife accident prone son and pregnant teenage daughter in a shabby house next door to a giant shopping center in the London suburbs. The Martins are the family from hell! Robert dreams if winning a dream holiday for his family, and when he fails to win yet another competition he flips, out tracks down the elderly winners, ties them up in the cellar and steals their tickets!
Woeful, this.
You have two funny British comedians in Lee Evans & Kathy Burke and you... make them act serious? What a waste. Those two try, as do the rest of the cast, but 'The Martins' is kinda awful. That's thanks to poor storytelling and some very unlikeable characters.
At least we have the pleasant Lennie James to watch, albeit in bits and pieces throughout - thankfully he got better roles in the decade or so following this. He is the only positive part of this in my opinion. It's abundantly clear what the film is aiming for, but man does it make a complete hash of the execution.
It only lasts for around 83 minutes... 83 minutes too long, unfortunately.