---
title: "Riff-Raff: the reviews"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/riff-raff/reviews"
title_page: "https://film.one/film/riff-raff"
critics_score: 66
critics_reviews: 7
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Riff-Raff (1991): what the critics said

Critics' score 66 from 7 reviews: 6 positive, 0 mixed, 1 negative.

Most critics take to Riff-Raff warmly, and most are surprised by how funny it is. The consensus is that Ken Loach lightens up here and lets the banter on a London building site carry the film: labourers divided by accent and background, united in contempt for the men paying them. Bill Jesse’s script draws steady praise for catching the texture of casual work, its scams, dangers and camaraderie, and the reviews credit the semi-improvised, unstarry casting for making the men sound like men rather than mouthpieces. Several note that the politics arrive without a sermon attached.

The reservations are small. Time Out finds the romance subplot wavers and that some improvised scenes slide into chaos. The spread is narrow: six reviews sit close together at good rather than remarkable. The one dissenter is Empire, which finds the anecdotes loosely strung, the late turns melodramatic, and the whole thing a television film shown on the wrong screen.

## The Guardian

Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 30 August 2009. 

Ken Loach continued to find fertile ground and plenty of comic potential in the working man's struggle against Thatcherism. The banter between construction workers, divided by ethnicity and idiom but united in disdain for their bosses, supplies many of the laughs.

[Read the review](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/aug/30/riff-raff-best-british-films)

## Los Angeles Times — Kenneth Turan

Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 17 March 1993. 

Loach depicts British have-nots for whom easy answers and lasting pleasures do not exist. The film is a likable, unpretentious slice of working-class life with warmhearted humor tempered by social consciousness.

[Read the review](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-03-17-ca-11760-story.html)

## RogerEbert.com — Roger Ebert

Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 19 March 1993. 

Loach's film portrays construction workers in London as proletarian outsiders alienated from management and the class system. It mixes comedy with sharp social observation of their precarious lives and camaraderie.

[Read the review](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/riff-raff-1993)

## The New York Times — Vincent Canby

Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 12 February 1993. 

Loach's tough, honest and achingly funny comedy about nonunion construction workers illustrates British working-class life without preaching. It updates earlier working-class films with unsentimental realism and regional accents requiring subtitles.

[Read the review](https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/12/movies/reviews-film-a-blue-collar-comedy-in-english-subtitled.html)

## Time Out

Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 

Loach lightens up for this documentary-style comedy about the scams, laughs, dangers and camaraderie of work on a London building site. Bill Jesse's pointedly funny script skilfully evokes the texture of working life, though the romance subplot wavers and some improvised scenes slip into chaos.

[Read the review](https://www.timeout.com/movies/riff-raff)

## Variety — Variety Staff

Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 31 December 1990. 

Loach's sprightly ensemble comedy about workers on a London building site surprises with its focus on yocks over politics. The semi-improvised film is strong on humor, easy to digest, and benefits from authentic casting.

[Read the review](https://variety.com/1990/film/reviews/riff-raff-1200428771/)

## Empire — Kim Newman

Fi1m's normalised score 30/100 (inferred from the text). 1 January 2000. 

The critic describes it as a loosely anecdotal account of labourers' lives that strings stories together effectively at times but ultimately falls flat with melodramatic contrivances and feels like a TV film on the big screen.

[Read the review](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/riff-raff-review/)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Our review: https://film.one/film/riff-raff.md