Eric Bishop (Steve Evets) — only one of the Erics in this movie — is a gangly Manchester postal worker who’s way off course when the movie begins, driving his car the wrong way round a roundabout until there’s a crash from which he’s lucky to walk away. But walk back to what? His second wife (or third; no one seems sure) has left him, his teenage son, Ryan (Gerard Kearns), is an errand boy for a vicious local gangster, and a younger stepson, Jess (Stefan Gumbs), is on the verge of becoming a wild child.
What has set Eric in a dither is the reappearance of his fragile first wife, Lily (Stephanie Bishop), who would be his long-lost love if he hadn’t been the one to lose her, walking out on her and their daughter in a panic 20 years earlier. The daughter (Lucy-Jo Hudson) is now a single mom getting her college degree, and her schedule demands that Eric and Lily share baby-sitting duties. Eric can’t even begin to articulate the titanic regret inside him; vehicular suicide seems the only option.
When that doesn’t work out, he begins unburdening himself to his bedroom poster of the great Manchester United football star Eric Cantona. To his and our surprise, the poster talks back.
Or rather, Eric Cantona — the real Cantona, played charmingly by himself — appears in Eric’s room to give him rueful Gallic advice, much the way Humphrey Bogart aided Woody Allen in “Play It Again, Sam.’’ “Looking for Eric’’ wears this gimmick easily, with Cantona disappearing for long stretches and turning up again when most needed. Our Eric doesn’t think it’s odd at all, and after a while neither do we.
