Category Archive: Comedy Film
Shaun of the Dead
Quality: Original. Film Title: Shaun Of The Dead. Photo Credit: Oliver Upton. Copyright: © 2004 Universal Studios. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
(Dir. Edgar Wright) (2004) You can forget all the other zombie films* – this is the only one worth watching, a hilarious look at a London gripped by an epidemic of uncertain aetiology and yet hardly changing! After all, as we see in several lovely, Spaced-style montages, Shaun and his girlfriend and useless mates still end up at the pub; they once again get in a fight; once again, Shaun forgets his obligations, but his Mum still loves him. The M1 and M3 are clogged. What’s new? Well, for one thing, our eponymous hero (Simon Pegg) manages, amid the chaos, pretty-much single-handed, to man-up…
Continue Reading →David Brent – Life on the Road
(Directed by Ricky Gervais) (2016) We have commented on David Brent from The Office and his unique place in the pantheon of The Theatre of Embarrassment. Here we have a film version of the next chapter of Brent’s life – he’s now at a feminine hygiene products office, handling phone sales and cold calls – and dreaming of his return (not comeback) as a lead singer in a rock ‘n’ roll band (“Foregone Conclusion”), which frankly, does not seem to be feasible. Brent is one-of-a-kind. He is excruciating, wanting, a bundle of inhibitions. You expect him to go on a kill-crazy rampage…
Continue Reading →Vale Gene Wilder
Jerome Silberman (Gene Wilder) (11 June 1933 to 29 August 2016) He was a great understated comedy star, a master of timing and amplified understatement. Best moments: as a very overheated Dr Frankenstein (make sure you pronounce that correctly) in Young Frankenstein; a great 2nd banana in Blazing Saddles, a superb put-upon pie in The Producers (“I fell on my keys”) and Rhinoceros, and an agreeable leading man in The Silver Streak, as well as in good work in many other films and TV productions [check out his great work as Bernard in the late 60s Death of a Salesman, or…
Continue Reading →Absolutely Fabulous
(The Movie) (Dir. Mandie Fletcher, 2016) ♥ We love Absolutely Fabulous, The TV show with its shrill and frabjous Carve-up of the naff world of fashion; The celebrity swim-through, the sterile passion Bubbling away in a Bollinger glass, Emptied like life and sadly come to pass. But as for the film, we rate it Poor, Great moments, yes: Patsy walks into a door And Edina sings her ‘road-walking’ song But the laughs aren’t sustained for very long. The walk-ons wholly fail to satisfy And Patsy’s Bowie disguise refuses to fly. We’re given a gloss on tired old themes And the plot design is showing its…
Continue Reading →Why “American Hustle” Was Stillborn
This sloppy and violently overpraised dud, with its almost obsessional sacrifice of content to form, could have been so much better. In the early 1980s, director Louis Malle, with the superb Atlantic City under his belt, was developing a film based on the Abscam political scandal, to be called Moon Over Miami. John Belushi would play the main character, con man Mel Weinberg (essentially the role Christian Bale played in the 2013 film). Dan Aykroyd would be the FBI man looking to implement a sting operation. But then Belushi inconveniently took a ‘speedball’ and died on 5 March, 1982. So crucial were his…
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