Review: Absolutely Fabulous - The Movie

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie
Cert: 15 / 91 mins / Dir. Mandie Fletcher / Trailer



And with the first breaths of Summer comes the first of the UK TV Sitcom adaptations (a spin-off from The Office lands next month), in what appears to be an annual push to make the small screen big. The long-mooted revival of Absolutely Fabulous certainly has the cast-list and the enthusiastic fan-base*¹ to be a contender, but can it live up to its own titular premise..?

The screenplay opts for the tried and tested Holiday On The Buses*² format, having the central characters Patsy and Edina flee to the south of France in a bid to escape negative press-attention after seemingly having killed Kate Moss. If the premise sounds a little flimsy, it's supported by solid humour (both scripted and visual), and the approach to celebrity-cameos that Rambo takes to backup ammunition. Playing spot-the-star is a lot of fun at first, but really stars to wear thin by the halfway-point in the film. On the plus side though everyone's enjoying their 15 seconds of fame, which counts for a lot, and you can tell that there was a queue of people wanting to appear, rather than a queue of favours waiting to be called in.

In the spirit of the TV series, AbFab does what it does well and revels in its own silliness. Saunders and Lumley are on fantastic form, and the first half hour is the most enjoyable when the pair are in their element on home-turf. Other TV-cast regulars show willing but are sidelined a little (although that's very much the nature of the characters anyway). As is par for the course with these things, the story itself is almost a bit of an afterthought, but that's always the way when you're adapting from thirty-minute TV shows. And when that narrative begins to creak, it's difficult to coast on charm when your party-trick is being professionally gauche.

More of a collection of set-pieces and running gags than a story-proper (although this applies to most comedy movies these days, to be fair), Jennifer Saunders' screenplay doesn't necessarily expand on any existing story-canon, and in the end it doesn't really feel like it's added anything unique to what's come before. In fact, you can almost hear the penny drop at around 82 minutes where the realisation that everything needs to be tied up sharpish really hits home. But it's easy to watch, consistently funny and never too mean-spirited, so this transition already fares better than others in its class (AbFab's spiritual sibling Bottom being a prime example).

While it's not going to win any awards nor make new fans, Absolutely Fabulous is very entertaining. Perhaps even more superficial than it intends to be, but saved by embracing its own preposterousness rather than fighting it.

Although, y'know. It's not a film.

In terms of comedy, just about any Sumer Brit-com of the last five years, even though this is actually better than the vast majority of them.



For the communal laughter, sure.



It sets its own bar low, and it clears it with ease.



Not best exactly, but reliably competent.



Nope.



Nope.



Level 1: This film's got Celia 'Bravo 5' Imrie in it. And Gwendoline 'Phasma' Christie.





*¹ The good news is that Friday night is movie night and Screen 1 was packed. Although it was mostly made up of a civilian audience. That doesn't matter to the accounting department of course (and nor should it), but the two patrons occupying our seats when we arrived knew emphatically (if cheerfully) that they were in G15 and G16, despite evidently not being able to read the numbers G11 and G12 on the seats they were actually in. Sent those fuckers packing, mind (again, cheerfully). You don't start that shit in my local, I don't care how many stamps you've got on your Lambrini gold-card…

*² Essentially where the characters from an established TV sitcom find themselves, for their cinematic adaptation, travelling to a more exotic location, often the coast or seaside and often by the narrative means of going on a holiday. In the past it was the aforementioned Holiday On The Buses and Are You Being Served, lately it's been Bad Education and The Intbetweeners (twice). As structures go, it's as lazy as it is reliable, ironically forcing the writers to work even harder to keep things moving. Well, it's supposed to...


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: What We Did On Our Holiday

What We Did On Our Holiday
Contains highlight-to-read spoilers.
That said, ^^ that film poster up there ^^ is a spoiler, as well, so y'know.
SPOILERS.
Cert: 12A / 95 mins / Dir. Andy Hamilton & Guy Jenkin




Yeah whatever, let's move on to the seven questions, shall we..?




It's representative of the premise, certainly, but I'll concede that while the trailer summarises the tone of some the film pretty well, it does not tell you the plot of the entire film.
Largely because if it did, no-one would go and see it.



Well, the humour is overwhelmingly twee, and the family-drama is overwhelmingly mawkish and manipulative. And then there's the events of the second act which felt oddly weightless for some reason. The film has a lot to say about the way in which children view and react to events around them, but rather than be charmed by the naive boldness of spirit, I just sat thinking 'Well, that wouldn't happen. Any of it.'

While the screenplay plays an unprecedented card, it did so unconvincingly for me, and I just thought the whole thing was in surprisingly poor taste. And if you aren't convinced by the events in that second act, none of it's going to work.



Well, I can see what it's doing, and I can see that it's doing it well (the frequent laughter of the audience around me seals that particular deal), but I can't bring myself to like any of it. The gentle, smug comedy of the first and third acts sits uncomfortably with the overall direction of the film, and feels like it's two separate TV series that have been combined into one and then trimmed down to half their planned running time.



Even with the sweeping vistas of the Scottish Highlands , What We Did On Our Holiday feels very televisual. This is more down to the screenplay than the photography, and it's certainly not a deal-breaker, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I could have watched this on TV with almost the same effect.



I'd like to say no, but that wouldn't be true. Tonight's audience seemed to thoroughly enjoy it, and I know more than a few people who it'll be ideal for. But for me personally, What We Did On Our Holiday is a tonal shambles and one of the most ill-judged screenplays I've seen brought to life. When the best thing in a film is the three children who are too young to be able to act properly*¹, you know you're in trouble.



I won't, no. In fact, I'm fairly certain I'll go to the point of actively avoiding it. Perhaps the film raises questions and doubts in my mind which I instinctively recoil from on a subconscious level. Or perhaps I just feel the whole affair is like a horrific, slow-motion car crash between Outnumbered and One Foot In The Grave, only with a younger principal cast and fewer jokes.

If there's one good thing to have come out of this, it's that Fisherman's Blues by The Waterboys is no longer a involuntary trigger for remembering that massively self-satisfied Visit Scotland advert from a few years back. Instead, it's been replaced by the mental image of three traumatised young children incinerating the corpse of a recently deceased loved-one on an abandoned beach, in an episode which they seem to cope surprisingly well with in the film, but which will undoubtedly cause them severe psychological issues in the future. Oh yeah, I guess it's not quite as charming when I put it like that. Believe me that I'm not exaggerating when I say it's only just behind Under The Skin for entry on the shortlist of the most unflinchingly disturbing scenes you've seen on a beach. Oh, and elsewhere there's a rape-joke as well, so well done there.



No, there isn't.

For those who've seen the film: Where did they get all those bottles from on the beach? They can't have been in the back of the truck. And I'm not convinced that the structure would have stayed afloat, even with them. That said, I've never had to dispose of a body. Like that.

*¹ Nothing against them personally; they've got more charm than most child actors, but they still sound like they're reading lines. And they're still more likeable than the adults. Me mordere.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.