Category Archives: Comedy

Comedy, Imaginary US Cinema

#188 – Current Affairs

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(1986, US, 114 min) Dir Andy Farmer. Cast Dan Aykroyd, Christopher Plummer, Daryl Hannah, Bebe Neuwirth, Dudley Moore

High-pitched farce set in a TV newsroom. The poster, featuring a shrugging Dan Aykroyd with his trousers around his ankles, says everything you need to know about Current Affairs – the satirical potential of the rolling news story of the American intervention into a proxy war in an unnamed Middle Eastern country is lost amidst the film’s focus on the comedic potential of who’s boinking who, where they’re doing it and who’s nearly caught them at it. A roll call will suffice in place of a plot: Aykroyd at his most jabber-mouthed is Sal Danners, the coked-up show runner; Christopher Plummer is Peter Christmas, venerable anchor and voice of steadfast morality; unbeknownst to all he and his co-anchor Felicity Day (Neuwirth) have just ended a clandestine relationship, the rancour of their split simmering on air; Daryl Hannah is Mimsy Butler, the intern that everyone is chasing; Christopher Lloyd is Hal, the narcoleptic cameraman and Dudley Moore is Reginald Blueford, their British correspondent in the Middle East getting into hotter and hotter water as the film goes on. Directed in a slapdash manner by the King of Falling Upwards Andy Farmer, who either throws one hell of a party or has a detailed map of where the bodies are.

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Comedy, Imaginary Czech Cinema

#187 – Škubnutí (Twitch, The)

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(1966, Czech, 65 min) Dir Jan Klos. Cast Josef Reinstein, Vratislav Kutálek, Frantisek Cermák.

Karel had everything he could have wanted from life – a loving wife, two adoring daughters, a good job, a nice apartment and a fridge full of food. That is until he wakes up one day with a facial twitch that causes him to spontaneously wink and now everyone thinks that Karel is up to something and not one person trusts him. His wife is now convinced that he’s having an affair, his boss suspects he has been cooking the books and the police don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth. By the end of the film poor Karel’s living in a squalid shed with a three-legged dog and nothing but turnips to eat, the whole of his life’s achievements having evaporated on account of his twitch. An absurd classic of black comedy, The Twitch found itself banned for thirty years in the country of it’s production for no given reason.

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Comedy, Imaginary French Cinema

#182 – Une Année à Fitou (One Year in Fitou)

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(2010, Fr, 96 min) Dir Roland Sacher. Cast Jean Dujardin, Ludivine Sagnier, Niels Arestrup, Yolande Moreau, Zoé Félix.

A little bit Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis, a little bit A Good Year – either way it’s an unusual film for Roland Sacher to have ended his career with, being that he was more readily associated with taut thrillers like Dans le Mur and Operation Reptile. It seems his death – a surprise at a healthy seventy – has set this notion in stone, erasing romantic comedies like Susanne and oddities like The Pass into Heaven’s Arms from the collective memory much like obits for Sidney Lumet spotlit Serpico and forgot about The Wiz. Anyway – city traderDujardin learns of his father’s death and is left in the will a decrepid vineyard in darkest Languedoc-Roussillon run by husband and wife Arestrup and Moreau who take a dim view of this pampered dunce swanning into town with his party time sister Sagnier in tow. Of course he comes to love the place and under his attention the vineyard blossoms and of course he falls in love with feisty local girl Félix to boot. You’ve seen this film a million times already but despite that Une Année à Fitou is still a pleasure. Perhaps it’s the scenery, perhaps it’s the performances, perhaps it was my low expectations going in but it’s a perfectly fine way to spend an hour and a half on a wet Sunday afternoon.

Comedy, Imaginary Irish Cinema

#181 – Noble Journey Home of the Spaniard Francisco, The

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(2013, Sp/Ire, 110 min) Dir Phil Neeson. Cast Antonio Banderas, Domhnall Gleeson, Colm Meaney, Pat Shortt.

Historical black comedy loosely based on the life of Francisco de Cuellar, who survived the sinking of his ship during the Spanish Armada washed ashore on the west of Ireland in County Sligo and had to make his way across the country to get back to Spain. Banderas is Francisco (last name withheld to allow for artistic license), a captain in the Spanish navy who wakes to find himself beached with the wreck of his ship about himself and his compatriots either being eaten by ravens and wild dogs or being looted by the locals. He hides until the cover of night when he can steal out and try to make his way across this unfamiliar land where nobody speaks his language. He is robbed by bandits who steal the only thing he has – his clothes. Naked, he makes his way to a sympathetic farmer’s house – they lend him clothes so that he make his way unnoticed (for they are sympathetic to anyone who would wage war on the English). Upon making his way he is set upon once more by bandits – once again his clothes are lost. Such is his ‘Noble Journey Home’. A further step up in budget and ambition from director Neeson following the impressive Ti Fac and Father Faith. Banderas is excellent also, displaying once again his seldom deployed comedic talent, and the decision to retain the language barrier leads to some fantastic comedy moments.

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Comedy, Imaginary US Cinema

#180 – #DESTROY!!

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(2013, US, 93 min) Dir Jay White. Cast Daryl Sabara, Linda Hamilton, Jason Hampton, Kevin Smith.

Comedy techno-horror. Gifted young hacker Jimmy Staedtler (Sabara) spends most of his time in his bedroom with the curtains drawn, desperately trying to think of a scheme that will put him on the map and avoiding his nerdly neighbour Hal (Hampton) when he notices that his Twitter account has been updating itself with sinister messages. This is when he discovers, along with the rest of the world, the worst news possible – so much information has been pumped into Twitter that it has achieved sentience and it is now reaching out across the web to take control of anything it can. Staedtler gathers a loose confederation of fellow hackers on 4chan but will they be able to achieve what the authorities haven’t and defeat the ultimate web-spanning intelligence while the world burns outside their windows? White’s foray into technological amusements is more fantastical than Los Data but it’s an inventive if super low budgeted comedy. It’s not above a little stunt casting either – Hamilton, as Staedtler’s mother, knows a thing or two about rogue computer intelligence from the Terminator series and noted blogger and sometime director Kevin Smith gamely cameos as himself before, perhaps inevitably, being murdered by his own Twitter feed.

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Comedy, Imaginary US Cinema

#179 – Mr Kill Man

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(2011, US, 106 min) Dir Jay White. Cast Michael Keaton, Justin Long, Elizabeth Shue.

A pre-Birdman rejuvenation Keaton starred in this, Mr Kill Man, in another role that riffs on his vigilante past. Mild mannered office drone Hamilton Brody is knocked on the head during what he believes to be an attempted robbery (but was, in fact, an attempt to save him from a worse fate from a falling brick) and when he wakes up in hospital he finds himself reborn as a Death Wish style vigilante, the self-styled Mr Kill Man. So, once he’s tricked the hospital staff into believing that he’s fine, he begins patrolling the night, looking for crimes to stop and wrongs to right. The only problem with this is that he doesn’t have a gun like he thinks he does – no, he’s actually facing down hardened criminals armed with nothing more than a scowl, a trench coat and a banana held like a revolver. It’s up to Brody’s wife and son (Shue and Long) following in the family car to stop him from getting hurt and protect him from the attentions of the law. A fun little film with a great central trio all perfectly shot in a sea of drenched neons, Dutch tilts and darkened alleys.

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Black and White, Comedy, Imaginary French Cinema

#175 – Taisez-vous! (Shut Your Face!)

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(1950, Fr, 61 min, b/w) Dir Albert. Cast Albert, Romy Pice, Oscar de la Vana, Jacques Jacques.

The first full length feature from future French film luminary Albert, of Le Roi du Canard and Monsieur B dans l’Univers fame. As such Taisez-vous! is an altogether more small-scale an enterprise, set entirely within one room in a library though since said room is the vast glass and iron reading room in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris the smallness of the scale is entirely relative. Albert plays a novice librarian on his first day on the job, desperate to not let a single noise disrupt the silence but inevitably mere shushing soon isn’t enough and before long he’s bursting bubbles of gum before they pop, making everyone remove their shoes (if by force if necessary) and trying to baffle the sound of books being set down with a well aimed catapult and a pile of small cushions. It all gets out of hand, of course, culminating in the bookshelves toppling like dominoes and Albert diving madly to bodily interrupt their crashing end. The whole enterprise rests on Albert and his performance and as such the film is a success – his whole body is a wonder of physical comedy and his facial expressions alone are worth the price of admission.

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Comedy, Imaginary British Cinema

#172 – Daniel, the Fart Catcher

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(1998, GB, 93 min) Dir Alastair Hirst. Cast David Thewlis, Clive Owen, Jane Horrocks, Kevin McKidd, Ewan Bremner.

Period comedy. Apparently a fart catcher was the derogatory term for a footman or valet in the 18th and 19th century and, in this, David Thewlis is Daniel, the fart catcher for the bastardly Lord Everdice (Owen). Everdice, having lost his family’s fortunes on the baccarat tables of Europe, now desires to wed Lady Balthirst (Horrocks), the only child of the fantastically wealthy Balthirst family who remains unwed due to the fact that she’s a kleptomaniac with Tourette’s. Daniel, on the other hand, has been taken in the employ of Balthirst père to make sure this doesn’t happen and must now try his damnedest to sabotage his masters amorous advances without raising suspicion. Further complicating matters are Brush and Wash (McKidd and Bremner, reunited from Trainspotting) who, in the service of Balthirst mère who just wants her daughter wed no matter the cost, are trying valiantly (if ineptly) to sabotage Daniel’s sabotagings. To the film’s advantage it’s directed by Alastair Hirst, costume drama veteran of 1985’s Buried Hearts and the 1992 TV adaptation of J. Langdon Beetleman’s Staedtler Quartet so the form of the film is very much in keeping with the genre being mocked. The film’s disadvantages are chiefly two – one is that it’s directed by Alastair Hirst, who may have directed a good few costume dramas but hasn’t directed a comedy, and the other is that one is constantly reminded in the watching of the film of how much better Blackadder would have handled the same material.

Comedy, Detective, Imaginary British Cinema

#168 – Excuse Me Sir, I’ve Just Been Shot

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(1973, GB, 105 min) Dir Aldous Oxbury. Cast Peter Cushing, Felicity Montague, Denholm Elliott, Christopher Lee.

Zany detective nonsense with Peter Cushing’s famed detective Albert Franklin investigating his own murder as he bleeds out from the gunshot wound he believes to be the agent of his ultimate demise. “But you should see a doctor!” exclaims his secretary, Pam. Not a bit of it – he’s too excited about the investigation to be bothered wasting his time on medical assistance. “Imagine how cold the trail will be by the time they’ve pulled out that bullet and stitched me up!” A fun romp with Denholm Elliott his nervy contact on the force and Christopher Lee as his incarcerated Moriarty-like nemesis. The best part of the film has to be the gravitas Cushing brings to the role that sells every scene regardless as to whether it requires him to crawl through a bed of eels (don’t ask) or deliver a dressing-down to a royal guard who he believes is wearing an improperly buttoned coat. Fantastic London locations add to the film’s charm including a chase through both Kew Gardens and Highgate Cemetery. This seems an obvious set-up for a series but alas, if this were the case there none but this sole entry.

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Comedy, Drama, Imaginary British Cinema

#163 – Dent

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(1987, GB, 105 min) Dir Malcolm Mowbray. Cast Michael Palin, Shirley Stelfox, Michael Elphick.

Simon Dent had always been an accountant, taking the same bus to the same firm for thirty years until the day he was called into the Managing Director’s office. “We’re downsizing, as the Americans call it,” the MD says and with that Simon’s life to that point is changed. On the way home, distracted by his grief, he hits a car that has pulled out in front of him, hitting his head on the steering wheel. Now everything’s different, suddenly losing his job is the best thing that’s happened to him – now he can grab life by the horns and ride it off a cliff no matter what his wife Doris says! Dent is a bit like if you crossed Falling Down with Reggie Perrin, the suppressed rage at the indignities of the modern world subsumed by a more childlike joie de vivre. The most important part of the film is that by the end, no matter what he tries to plug the absence in his life with, he remains unhappy, missing something. “I didn’t just have a job and a routine,” he says, “What I had was dignity.” A forced and pretty twee film but one featuring a fine, heartbreaking performance from Palin.

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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms