Just saw this last night, and thought it was a genuinely enjoyable, if perhaps somewhat slight, film. Rob Brydon, who I have never actually *laughed* at before (smirked and grinned perhaps) is pretty hysterical all the way through. The funniest part of the film (excluding the hot chestnut scene, but then I'm a sucker for slapstick) is the end credit sequence where Brydon and Coogan (or 'Brydon' and 'Coogan' etc) are trading Al Pacino impersonations ("Well that's just Columbo").
Overall, I think it worked OK; has the same flaw that all overly self-referential stuff has in that it's hard to get worked up about the characters when you know that their existence is shortly to be traduced and exploded. So the outrage that I would normally feel at the possiblility of someone cheating on Kelly MacDonald, is eliminated by the quotation marks that appear around her at all times.
Having said that, there is some nicley observed character stuff in there as well (Jenny Also's earnestness that gets gradually more ridiculous, Greg the reporter's air of fetid corruption, everybody's face after Mark Williams' "Shite").
Oh, and am genuinely intrigued as to how the 50-ish bloke and his wife who walked out with a harumph halfway through managed to miss any reviews of the film. |
