Perhaps as a subconscious tribute to the late Rob Reiner, director of This Is Spinal Tap, the greatest mockumentary ever made, I am kicking off 2026 with a review of the 2024 UK film Snooker Man, which won’t be entering the pantheon of great mockumentaries any time soon.

That’s not to say the premise isn’t clever:  Johnny “Snooker Man” Bonnar, the 17th-rated lookalike for the great world snooker champion Ronnie O’Sullivan, stumbles into an avocation in miniature snooker and pursues a path to challenge the reigning champion Wolfgang in the World Championship of Miniature Snooker (WCMS).

Humorously, the genesis of this original film concept began with Snooker Man director Pete Casserly winning a “best adult short film award” at the Dorking Film Festival in 2020. Casserly’s film was about someone trying to audition for a role as Rodney Trotter, the lead of a musical version of the British sitcom Only Fools and Horses. In Casserly’s film, the lead actor, Nick Hayles, is said to look like Bruce Campbell, the star of Sam Raimi’s famous cult film Evil Dead. While it’s a decent resemblance, Casserly’s mother said Hayles looked much more like Ronnie O’Sullivan. And, so the germs of the mockumentary Snooker Man were born.

Snooker Man starts on a high note. The opening credits pay tribute to the James Bond movie Skyfall with the fluid graphics, dissolving and reassembling motifs, balletic characters, and super-imposed silhouettes (of a snooker player!). The title song “Snooker Man,” sung by Nekane, also harkens to Adele’s “Skyfall” in musical tone, though hardly in lyrics (“The ladies want him | The gentlemen want to be him | He’s a snooker man”).

But, it’s not too long before you not only realize the film has nothing to do with James Bond, aside from featuring a Daniel Craig impersonator who acts out scenes from Casino Royale, but also that the rest of the movie is not nearly as clever.

First, we are introduced to Johnny Bonarr (Nick Hayles) and his pitiable career starring in terrible movies, such as The Girl With Two Masks; To Kill a Princess; and Chihuahua Man. (Making this even more twisted is these clips are from real movies created by Casserly, who shared in an interview that by inserting these clips, “I kind of made fun of how terrible they were as an apology to the actors who unfortunately had to take part in them!”)

Johnny made these films with Barry Keane (Stephen Sheridan), an unaccomplished director who unsuccessfully aims to double for British stage thespian Toby Jones. When that fails, Keane launches Prestige Lookalikes, the UK’s lowest-rated lookalike agency, and hires Johnny to double as Ronnie O’Sullivan. He’s the 17th-ranked lookalike, which everyone agrees is pretty pathetic, given he’s impersonating the world’s #1 rated snooker player.

Johnny’s deteriorating career takes an unsuspecting u-turn, when he needs to emulate The Rocket by shooting on a 36” snooker table. His performance, or rather the fact there is a film crew on the premises capturing his cue strokes, enrages  the sport’s reigning foul-mouthed champion, Wolfgang, who challenges him to a future match. Soon, there is a new miniature snooker wunderkind making waves, and his name is Snooker Man, a player even capable of running a 147 break in under four minutes.

Now, I’m more than happy to watch a competitive match of a miniaturized sport, especially one that I love as much as billiards. And, miniature sports are not as outlandish as one might think. Fun fact: there are real, professional world championships of miniature golf, miniature soccer (i.e., foosball), table hockey, and Subbuteo table football. And, as the director Casserley notes in an interview, there are also world championships for everything from cup stacking to Rubik’s Cube solving to air guitar playing. So, is miniature snooker really such a stretch? 

But, match after match after match starts to get downright dull, a far cry from the “nonstop thrill ride of ball potting action” that the WCMS marketing promises. A rogue’s gallery of opponents, including The Ambassador and Hong Kong’s reigning champ Queenie, does little to enliven the atmosphere. And the final match, pitting Snooker Man against Wolfgang, is predictable, unenjoyable, and unforgivable for not even having the right number of balls on the snooker table.

The movie’s post-credits, which include Snooker Man embarrassingly performing his new K-pop single “Baegman Janga (Millionaire J)” that reached 287th in the Korean music charts, only cement the film’s downward creative spiral from its opening credits.

Snooker Man is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video. For a limited time, it is also currently streaming for free on YouTube.