At the time of writing, there was only one review on IMDb for this film and it referred to it as "easy going and enjoyable". That's pretty much the opposite of my experience with the film...personally I found the film depressing and miserablist without enough in the way of insight or catharsis to balance it out. It's annoying because I thought the film started off rather well. At some point between making Meantime (1984) and High Hopes (1988) Mike Leigh became a considerably better filmmaker.