TYTD Reviews

I’m starting to think I just don’t like Keith Allen or Keith Allen’s sense of humour. Here we have a parody of 70s cop shows, with ‘The professionals’ seemingly being the main influence. Alan plays a former cop turned stuntman who partnered up with an old friend to help recover the chiefs daughter from two performers who want 50 grand in exchange for her return…

But at nearly 45 minutes long, it’s about 20 minutes longer than I could stomach. Not particularly funny…if men running around the streets in their underwear and jokes about bad singers are peak humour for you. Then this is your kind of bag…for me? I struggled with it. Not particularly clever or funny. I got about half an hour into it before clock watching and that last 13 minutes was a serious slog.

Won’t be watching it again, and I can’t recommend it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-bullshitters-roll-out-the-gunbarrel/

Basically ‘The Comic strip takes the piss out of the kind of movies Channel 4 would play at 2 In the morning’

An art house parody flick about a couple of sisters known as ‘The slags’ who are released from Neo noir future prison and join up with their ‘almost 18’ years old gang…only to discover their stomping ground has been overrun by Hawaiians.

It’s low hanging fruit generally speaking to poke fun of art house cinema. But this one is eerily accurate to the real thing (it reminded me heavily of films like ‘Decoder’) the jokes are fine, but no gut busters unfortunately.

It’s just a pretty good entry in ‘The Comic strip’ and given I wasn’t aware of Jennifer Saunders writing ability, I think this is a pretty sturdy piece!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/slags/

A Wonderfully bleak dark comedy and a frankly hilarious half hour of television. ‘Eddie Monsoon: A Life?’ Is a mockumentary charting the recent events in the life of Eddie, a chronically alcoholic, manic depressive with severe liver failure, cancer, prolapses, a broken arm and leg and asthma.

His television career in tatters after a string of controversies, Eddie is in rehab for the 17th time (in 18 months) and this documentary interviews him and the people around him, to try and find out, what went wrong…

Honestly, one of the best ‘Comic strips’ I’ve seen so far. Written and Starring Ade Edmondson as Eddie. There’s a certain frantic unknowing energy that radiates off this thing, you honestly never *quite* know what direction its going to fly off in.

An astonishing hit rate on the joke front, shot just like the documentaries of the day and with some wonderful faux archival recordings of Eddie’s TV show. This one made me gut laugh a good few times. I really liked it and I’m honestly stunned that this was a one off. It just SCREAMS for a follow up honestly…in fact…the longer the gap between this and a follow up, the funnier and bleaker it gets really!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/eddie-monsoon-a-life/

Another Comic Strip outing that’s light on laughs and heavier on story telling. This one center’s around a guy named Gino, who’s on the run from the police (for an unspecified reason) and basically the whole film is just following him on the run, occasionally getting into slightly daft situations.

Honestly? I found this one a bit dull. The closest I came to laughing was Lionel Jeffrey’s doing his best Peter Cook impersonation as an elderly taxi cab driver…but that was unfortunately short lived.

Keith Allen seems to think that being Keith Allen in a funny situation is enough to make comedy happen (spoilers: it isnt) no matter how hard he tries to make wearing a flat cap look silly…

All the main players barring Jennifer Saunders are pushed into supporting roles here, non of which are interesting of likeable.

As a piece of comedy, I’ve been to funnier wakes. As a piece of television or as a short film. It’s to standard. But it’s not one I’ll revisit in a hurry.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/gino-full-story-and-pics/

‘The Comic strip’ tries it’s hand at spaghetti westerns with semi mixed results. It’s basically 2 groups of travellers, one led by Rik Mayall in full Lee Van Cleef garb, and another led by French and Saunders playing a couple of aussies who pick up a drugged up hitchhiker.

I think one of the biggest things that holds this one back from really being up there is its kind of half hearted on mimicking the directional style of those kinds of movies. Those grand, ultra wide shots that really take In the scenery are few and far between.

The tone isn’t quite right either. It does dabble with that hyper moody atmosphere, but by the end its given way to just a bit of a slapstick runaround…which is something we’ve seen in other specials handled quite a bit better.

That being said this one does have a pretty solid laugh hit rate, Mayall picked up writing duties on this one, and while the pacings a little uneven, and the characters a little poorly defined (I’m STILL not 100% sure what the point of it was, other than ‘here’s some random characters being goofy in spain) it’s still quite good fun and one of the more enjoyable ‘comic strip’ specials.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/a-fistful-of-travellers-cheques/

The comic strip at times dances a fine line between traditional comedy, parody and drama. That’s not strictly a bad thing, I’d take a comedy that handles drama well over just a poor quality comedy any day. ‘Susie’ is essentially a parody drama of those heated and lusty stories of free thinking women having multiple affairs and living their best life, only to find a slightly hollow experience at the end of it as their world comes crashing down once the lies have been revealed.

Susie is in a relationship with Martin, but cheating on him with Dave, and about to cheat on both of them with a pop star named Gary.

The humour in this one really is down to the fact that in these dramas the women who do what they want are usually shown to be remorseful or regret their free wheeling ways.

Susie on the other hand isn’t bothered. And quite happily makes blunt decisions quickly depending on whatever going on.

That’s about half the humour for this story, with the other half being Garry the popstar listlessly bounding around his country estate in a drug fueled haze getting his staff to help him with everything, having a vision of wanting to be a land working farmer…but non of the volition to actually BE a land working farmer.

I think if those Jilly cooper-esq novels are your thing, you’ll quite enjoy this, but unfortunately to someone who isn’t a dedicated reader of steamy fiction…as of 2024…the lines between parody and legitimacy have been blurred beyond recognition.

A little too subtle for its own good, to modern audiences it’s just too ‘straight cut’ to really get the laughs in. Dawn French is really good fun here as Susie…she gets the tone, but I think she really nails this type of ‘self aware, but blunt’ style of performance best in things like ‘Murder most horrid’.

I can appreciate what it’s trying to do, but I ultimately wasn’t won over.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/susie-1984/

An offering from Rik Mayall and Adr Edmondson. Involving a Pervy cinema owner trying to screen a movie at the ONE time of day when he knows noone will turn up…only someone turns up.

Surreally funny in a ‘Vic and Bobs: The Weekenders’ kind of way. It’s one you really have to be in the right mindset to enjoy and today I just wasn’t really fully feeling it.

There were a few good laughs in this one, it’s very silly and overly simplistic. But the downtrodden ‘June’ as played by Jennifer Saunders just ends up coming across as a bit TOO cruel for a zippy goofy comedy.

This was fine…but it wasn’t one of the Best.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dirty-movie-1984/

Another film im picking up as part of a larger project, so for now I’ll keep it simple.

This films insane. like, actually properly insane. Even in my wildest cough syrup driven fever dreams, i’ve NEVER seen something so vividly terrifying, demented, unhinged and garish in all my years.

Imagine if Tom Rubnitz huffed lead paint, got horny and had an adult film cast waiting in the wings to realise whatever the hell he put to paper. Thats about 60% of the way there to describing what this thing feels like to watch.

I’ve used the term ‘Concussion cinema’ before to describe a film that feels like its events are playing out while you watch with a severe concussion. This is absolutely one of those movies.

It overstays its welcome by about an hour of its hour and 20 runtime, its repetative, manic, irritating and in places honestly scarier than ANYTHING to come out of the following 50 years of horror. And yet, at the same time, its unique loudness and colourful, creative subject making, I found strangely compelling.

Would pair well with ‘Batpussy’, this films on a whole other plain of reality and while I absolutely WONT endorse it, I think its something everyone should at least try to see once in their lives…just for the utter mind melt it induces.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/sex-in-the-comics/

The second outing for ‘The Famous Five’ and for my money it’s less iconic, almost certainly better. The budgets slightly higher and they seem to have seen what went well in the first one and streamlined it.

I liked the fact that it IS treated as a direct sequel to the first one, though it is a bit of a shame that the ‘bite’ that the first one had seems to have been toned down a bit here…no beastiality references, killing dogs or calling out how racist the original books were here…

STILL! It’s jolly good fun, like I say, I enjoyed it arguably moreso than the original. And it’s definitely one of the classics.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/five-go-mad-on-mescalin/

Watched on Sunday January 14, 2024.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/five-go-mad-in-dorset/1/