Get Real

Artie is 12 and leads a charmed life. His parents are very successful sports agents and he plays football at a high level himself, expecting to get picked for the Premiership when he’s a bit older. The house, car, entertainment and lifestyle he’s used to feel like the future rather than the present. However, every day after school he and his younger brother and sister (twins named improbably after Neil and Glynnis Kinnock; he’s named after Arthur Scargill) go to his grandfather’s, to the house where his mother grew up. Here there is some kind of everyday normality, with tea, homework and the TV. Soon, though, we see that that normality is disintegrating as Grandad tries to hide the onset of Alzheimer’s from his family. Artie in turn tries to protect his grandfather and comes up with different tactics for hiding his discovery from his workaholic parents.

Get Real has some lump in the throat moments as Artie’s family realise what is important to them and Artie himself is shown that he doesn’t need to shoulder the whole family’s woes. The ending is encouraging for showing how families can become closer through times of crisis and how growing up for Artie is different from what he expected.