Comedy, Reviews

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

24 Apr 2008

ROMANCE/COMEDY (15) 110min The Judd Apatow movie production line shows no signs of abating as Forgetting Sarah Marshall follows the template of Knocked Up to deliver some laughs, banal moralising and side characters that outshine the lead. Writer and…

Kung Fu Panda

3 Jul 2008

COMEDY/ANIMATION (PG) 91min In the words of Carl Douglas’ 1974 disco hit: ‘Everybody is kung fu fighting.’ Everybody, that is, apart from overweight panda Po (voiced by Jack Black). He dreams about joining his heroes, the Fierce Five, in butt-kicking…

Mes amis, mes amours

3 Jul 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (15) 106min Mes Amis, Mes Amours resembles a Gallic version of a Richard Curtis movie, set in an affluent, quarter of London and peopled by French expats: it’s less a romantic comedy than a sentimental fantasy of city living among an…

Michael McIntyre

23 Aug 2007

Michael McIntyre has the look of someone your mother would like. Unashamedly middle class in his dress, mannerisms and speech, it’s easy to see why he is being heralded as the latest thing in ‘posh comedy’. In terms of demeanour and delivery, McIntyre…

Ratatouille

4 Oct 2007

(U) 110min COMEDY/ANIMATION Writer/director Brad Bird’s animated version of The Iron Giant made him the obvious candidate to follow on from John Lasseter’s innovative groundwork at Pixar, where he scored an immediate hit with The Incredibles. So even…

Charlotte Hudson & Leila Hackett

Fresh sketches and bouncy tales

9 Aug 2007

Charlotte Hudson and Leila Hackett’s lively performance and British beach setting perfectly reflect a Blackpool-style summer: slightly tacky and full of tongue-in cheek exhibitionism. Fake seagulls call in the distance as a parade of characters accost…

Mark Watson - Crap at the Environment

5 Jun 2008

POLITICAL COMEDY (Hodder & Stoughton) When reducing your carbon footprint, the first thing to do is admit that you’re crap at the environment. This is according to stand-up comedian, writer, TV personality and one-man iceberg melter Mark Watson, who…

Welcome to the Sticks

8 May 2008

COMEDY (12A) 106min Dany Boon’s box-office hit is the most successful French movie of all time. In just seven weeks on release, it broke 1966 comedy La Grande Vadrouille’s record for the highest ever attendance for a French film on home soil with 17…

WALL-E

17 Jul 2008

ANIMATION (U) 103min Can Pixar do no wrong? On the evidence of the CG animation studio’s ninth feature film, the answer is a resounding no. Once again Pixar pushes the envelope in the field it’s been trailblazing since the early 1980s, delivering…

The Brothers Solomon

1 Nov 2007

COMEDY (15) 92min Comedians Will Forte and Will Arnet dumb down their already dumb strain of Saturday Night Live humour to exhausting effect in this lowbrow comedy. When their father (Lee Majors) lapses into a coma, the understandably single Solomon…

Ismo Leikola

16 Aug 2007

How funny is observational comedy with a Finnish accent? Very funny, actually. With comedy so low-key and off-the-wall it comes right out of nowhere, his style is decidedly un-energetic, but with a priceless delivery. Leikola is a Scandinavian Mitch…

Kristen Schall

Whispering genius cobbles together a hit

9 Aug 2007

The Assembly Rooms appears to have been putting up a determined campaign the last few years to platform a string of quirky female American comics with offbeat dispositions all of their own. Wendy Spero and Maria Bamford made inroads with varying success…

Baby Mama

17 Jul 2008

COMEDY (12A) 99min Each generation gets the Mary Tyler Moore it deserves; as creator and star of NBC’s 30-Rock sitcom, Tina Fey has earned herself the right to be 2008’s funny-girl. And even though writer/director Michael McCullers seems intent…

Sydney White

17 Jan 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 107min Ever since Amy Heckerling’s Clueless loosely adapted Jane Austen’s Emma to a modern High School setting it’s been the done thing to drop classic texts into a contemporary teenage setting. Joe Nussbaum’s Sydney White…

Death at a Funeral

1 Nov 2007

DRAMA/COMEDY (15) 90min Having reportedly had his hands burned by the studios, who demanded re-shoots and re-cuts to what turned out to be a risible remake of The Stepford Wives, director Frank Oz (Mr Muppets to you and me) turns his not untalented…

Frank Skinner

23 Aug 2007

After a decade away from the stand-up circuit, you’d think that quite a fuss would have been made of Frank Skinner’s Edinburgh return, back in the exact same room where it all started for him with his Perrier-winning year of 1991. Yet when the lights go…

Glenn Wool

23 Aug 2007

If ever a comic had an appropriate surname, then it’s this surrealistic Canadian. You could knit a jumper with the majority of this set, but while it may be overflowing with material, give one of its many loose ends a tug and all the threads would come…

Hattie Hayridge

23 Aug 2007

She may have one of the slowest openings to any comedy show on the Fringe, but Hattie Hayridge is in no mood to speed things along at any point. This is either fantastically brave or a sign that her nervy stage disposition is not as much of an act as it…

Sex and the City

5 Jun 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE/COMEDY (15) 145min As Carrie Bradshaw might say – ‘I couldn’t help but wonder how four ageing divas were going to resurrect Sex and the City: The Brand’. Is it possible that Charlotte, Samantha, Carrie and Miranda could pull off the same…

One Last Dance

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY/CRIME/ROMANCE (18) 110min (Tartan DVD retail/rental) Straight-to-DVD premieres no longer herald generally third-rate titles, as this off-beat Asian crime film proves. Written and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Max Makowski, and financed and…

Alex Horne

23 Aug 2007

Alex Horne revels in trying to find comedy in the most unlikely of corners. It’s one thing to make fun out of ancient languages (the absurdities of Latin was the topic of his last full Fringe run) but he’s now moved on to the inherently unfunny pursuit…

Phil Nichol

23 Aug 2007

When a comic stands before his crowd after yet another uninspired anecdote and asks: ‘Don’t you think that was hilarious? I thought that was hilarious,’ you can only conclude that he knows he is in big trouble. With Hiro Worship, last year’s inaugural…

Abigail Burdess

16 Aug 2007

Coming out in a wheelchair and disarming everybody with her offbeat chatter, Abigail Burdess shows it’s no big thing to break your foot if you’re a comedian. She warms up the audience with her quirky, wide-eyed observations and quotes from her…

Mark Watson

16 Aug 2007

Mark Watson deserves his moment. Having proved to be one of the true innovators on the Fringe with his marathon comedy sessions, off-the-cuff novel writing and participation in daft quizzes, his solo hour of stand-up has grown in stature and scope in…

Miles Jupp

16 Aug 2007

There are few things in life quite so satisfying than seeing a posh person throwing a bit of a wobbler. And so it’s with great pleasure that Miles Jupp brings us Everyday Rage and Dinner Party Chit Chat, a perusal of the moments in life when Jupp…

John Richardson

Delightful surreal obsessive material

9 Aug 2007

BBC6 radio host Jon Richardson is clearly at home behind a microphone. Charming and self-effacing, he moves through a show that might have been subtitled OCD, Or How Other People Drive Me Insane, segueing effortlessly between the different elements of…

Paul Sinha

King of the comedy world

9 Aug 2007

Paul Sinha has a simple recipe for enjoying life. He wants us all to remember those fleeting moments when we felt like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. While Sinha’s King of the World moments are rather more everyday than balancing on the prow of a doomed…

Russell Kane

Putting the accent on originality

9 Aug 2007

Plucking his theme from a review he received last year, Russell Kane decided to take on criticism and explore the notion of stereotype and cliché in comedy. A risky gambit, as it would be all too easy to simply slip into those stereotypes – the Essex…

In Search of a Midnight Kiss

5 Jun 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (15) 99min Writer/director Alex Holdridge’s dispatch from the frontline of the LA dating scene is exactly what it depicts: a witty, slight affair. Wilson (Scoot McNairy) is a detached single desperate for a date to provide him with a…

William Sutcliffe - Whatever Makes You Happy

8 May 2008

FAMILY COMEDY (Bloomsbury) William Sutcliffe, Edinburgh-based spouse to Maggie O’Farrell and schoolmate of Ali G, is still best known for his 1997 coming of age debut Are You Experienced? Eleven years and three more books later, his fifth novel…

Andrew O'Neill

23 Aug 2007

Is Andrew O’Neill rock or folk? He has the heavy metal chains but he also has long hair and black framed glasses. He has a V-shaped guitar, but it’s acoustic instead of electric. More importantly, is this a comedy show or surrealist theatre? The answer…

Jerry Sadowitz

23 Aug 2007

The Sadowitz invective seems ever more bilious each passing year. The victims of his ire in this show range from the English (‘feckless cunts’), Heather Mills (‘cripple’) and even Harry Potter (‘fictional cunt’). Outrageously offensive and with a…

Kirsten O'Brien

23 Aug 2007

Early on in what feels rather like a light-hearted corporate seminar for C-List celebrities, Kirsten O’Brien talks of her status as a ‘borderline boiler’ and the probability of male audience members having entertained bedroom fantasies for the toothy…

Kitty Flanagan

23 Aug 2007

Opening with a darkly humorous short film (that is almost worth the cost of admission alone), proceedings then lull as Flanagan embarks on an unoriginal stand-up routine that covers accents, children and therapy before lifting things by closing with an…

Jim Jeffries

16 Aug 2007

You may consider yourself not easily offended. You may feel that nothing shocks you, and that there is nothing left to say that is truly controversial or distasteful. If this is the case consider yourself well and truly wrong. Since his appearance at…

Brendan Hunt

9 Aug 2007

Warning: don’t have sex with this man. Maybe think twice about employing him, too, and do not sleep with his girlfriend. After a merciless autobiographical trawl through the Boom Chicago star’s mucky linen that builds to a frenzied climax (literally) in…

Limmy

Hit and miss character affair

9 Aug 2007

Delivering character and sketch comedy with a distinctly Glaswegian accent, Limmy has built himself a considerable following with his World of Glasgow podcasts, and followers are packed into every corner of Stand II to see his first live shows. But…

Change of Address

22 May 2008

COMEDY/DRAMA (12A) 85min French horn teacher David (Emmanuel Mouret) is improbably picked up by impulsive Anne (Frédérique Bel). She convinces him to come and live in her small Parisian flat. These oddballs are obviously perfect for each other but in…

The Good Night

17 Jan 2008

COMEDY/DRAMA/ROMANCE (15) 93min Not above cashing-in on family connections, writer/director Jake Paltrow’s romantic comedy casts his older sister Gwyneth as the dowdy, disaffected partner of commercial jingle writer Gary (Martin Freeman). A kind…

Brendon Burns

23 Aug 2007

There’s a lot to get annoyed about with Brendon Burns. He’s a bit squealy, a bit shouty, a bit prone to flights of squealy, shouty pseudo-philosophical ramblings. A bit like an Aussie Bill Hicks. A bit 1993. Yet with Brendon Burns, what you are seeing…

Chopper

23 Aug 2007

Chopper is the ‘international ambassador of hard’. So claims Heath Franklin as he brings us his successful sketch show character, based on real-life jailbird psycho Mark Brandon Read. The premise is simple: Chopper pops up wherever you least expect him…

David O'Doherty

23 Aug 2007

Due to his distinctive, idiosyncratic style (plus, possibly, last year’s Eddies nomination) David O’Doherty has a strong following and has nothing to prove. Yet, for the sixth year, he serves up the goods. In sharp contrast to O’Doherty’s endearingly…

Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players

23 Aug 2007

Having visited the Fringe in 2004 and 2005, last year wasn’t quite the same without the Trachtenburgs around, sporting their thrift store chic. There seems to be no real barrier between the onstage and offstage personalities of Jason, Tina Pina and…

Jason Manford

16 Aug 2007

Too much success early on in a career can be a double-edged sword. Jason Manford first came to attention two years ago with an inspired, Perrier-nominated debut in which he exploded various urban myths and apocryphal tales. As a fan of that auspicious…

Jo Caulfield

16 Aug 2007

With an opening gambit about Heather McCartney’s shoe(s), Caulfield shows she means business. Cooking up hell with her projectile invective about the things that enrage her, including Jodie Marsh, Clinton Cards and BA, she delivers one-liners like death…

Lovespring International

Sky One, Sun 12 Aug, 10.30pm

9 Aug 2007

COMEDY Ricky Gervais can be criticised for many things, such as his mad cackle and the popularity of Karl Pilkington. And here’s a third thing. Lovespring International would most likely never have been made had the US not fallen in love with The…

Peter Kay

The Sound of Laughter (Century)

12 Oct 2006

COMEDY AUTOBIOGRAPHY Since Peter Kay has built his career almost entirely upon a shared sense of nostalgia, it is only to be expected that his autobiography might contain a few ‘an’ then it were all back ‘ome for Manimal’ style anecdotes. But…

Hancock

3 Jul 2008

SUPERHERO/COMEDY (12A) 91min The writers and director of Hancock take a hyper-powered leaf out of the Mystery Men and Return of Captain Invincible school of heroism with Hancock. Will Smith plays a nihilistic superhero who has fallen out of favour…

Teeth

19 Jun 2008

HORROR/COMEDY (18) 93min Vagina dentata is the Latin name for a vagina with teeth, a primal fear which crops up in a number of different cultures and philosophies, now emerging at the centre of this teen flick written and directed by Mitchell…

I Served The King of England

22 May 2008

COMEDY/WAR (15) 119min Czech writer/director Jirí Menzel’s adaptation of Bohumil Hrabal’s novel depicts the life of aspiring hotelier Jan Díte (Ivan Barnev) as a non-stop cavalcade of good food and even-better sex enjoyed under the darkening shadow of…

Smart People

8 May 2008

COMEDY DRAMA (15) 94min Another week and another dysfunctional American family comedy. Scripted by novelist Mark Poirier and directed by newcomer Noam Murro, Smart People examines the improbable rejuvenation of widowed, middle-aged English professor…

In Bruges

10 Apr 2008

CRIME/COMEDY (18) 107min A pair of mismatched professional hitmen are sent to the picturesque titular Belgian city to lie low after a job in London goes wrong. There, young philistine Ray (Colin Farrell) and older, cultured Ken (Brendan Gleeson) argue…

27 Dresses

27 Mar 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 110min During an interview to promote Knocked Up, actress Katherine Heigl said of the Judd Apatow comedy that brought her worldwide fame (after her years lighting up Grey’s Anatomy): ‘It paints women as shrews, as humourless and…

Les Patterson Saves The World

13 Mar 2008

COMEDY (15) 85min (Arrow DVD retail) Strewth! When an unfortunate incident involving fart-burning at the UN sees Sir Les Patterson ignite Mustafa Toul, dictator of an oil rich middle eastern state, our hero is sent there to make amends. From there he…

Semi-Pro

28 Feb 2008

COMEDY (15) 91min Will Ferrell raises his game with this typically energetic and supremely daft ‘frat pack’ comedy that also boasts a surprising winning streak in its semi-serious celebration of the now defunct American Basketball Association. With…

DVD Roundup

15 Nov 2007

‘No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees/No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds!’ That’s how English poet and humourist Thomas Hood chose to describe the month of November. There is some of Hood’s cheeky sense of observation in John Waters: This…

Bill Bailey

1 Nov 2007

STAND-UP SECC, Glasgow, Wed 7–Fri 9 Nov It seems clear that Bill Bailey has never minded looking somewhat foolish in the pursuit of his chosen career path. Back in the early days when he was a mere West Country boy trying to earn a modest showbusiness…

The History of the World Backwards

18 Oct 2007

COMEDY BBC4, Tue 30 Oct, 10pm Of all the survivors of The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Robert Newman has arguably been the one to escape with the largest amount of public goodwill behind him. Punt and Dennis have eased themselves into genteel…

As You Like It

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY/ADAPTATION (12A) 126min His forthcoming remake of Anthony Shaffer/Joseph L Mankewicz’s Sleuth (this time adapted by Harold Pinter) may put his career back on track, but Kenneth Branagh’s once golden touch with the Bard turns leaden with As You…

Hatchet

20 Sep 2007

HORROR/COMEDY (18) 85min Although the tagline – ‘it’s not a remake, it’s not a sequel and it’s not based on a Japanese one’ – suggests Hatchet is an original horror movie, it’s far from that. It is, as a second tagline more accurately describes this…

Alyssa Kyria

23 Aug 2007

Kyria’s talents as a comic actor are evident in this patchy but entertaining character act. Compered by Ariadne the Greek socialite, the show also features an Australian New Age dimwit, a snooty tennis-playing nymphomaniac and plenty more grotesques.

Andrew McClelland

23 Aug 2007

In one of the hottest rooms on the Fringe, this madcap Australian sweats buckets trying to get laughs from his show which is about nothing more or less ambitious than his favourite songs. You’ll either adore his mugging immediately or sit open-mouthed…

Hamell on Trial

23 Aug 2007

Can there be anything worse than someone banging on about how wild life was in the 60s/early 70s? Possibly not, and in The Terrorism of Everyday Life cult hero Hamell tortures the uninitiated with a string of shouty punkish anthems and marginally…

Harmon Leon

23 Aug 2007

This dreadlocked American claims to be The Infiltrator but how he managed to work his way into the comedy section of the Fringe programme is his greatest hoax. He’s on stage for perhaps ten minutes as he plays some largely pointless footage of him…

Heroes and Villains

23 Aug 2007

This two-hander by Matt Greene and Darren Richman features a pair of life’s losers not quite winning a huge fortune on the lottery and spending the next hour chatting about girls and their problems with some level of humour and verve. The piece thinks…

Holly Burn

Brian Donaldson

23 Aug 2007

There’s a genuine acting talent in Hello, Holly! but a laugh-free script does nothing to save her from dying here. Nice ideas like bringing to life the Angel of the North and a horse actor recur with little weight behind them and Burn’s tortured…

Janice Phayre

23 Aug 2007

With Occasional Showers is like a comedy hit and run: over before you know it has begun, it leaves you stunned by an onslaught of gags about relationships, sex and being an asshole. Its finale is so surreal and utterly surprising that not even the…

Kim Hope

23 Aug 2007

A fizzing ball of nervous energy, Hope bounds onstage, announces she’s going to do an hour on the theme of time then proceeds to waste a great deal of the precious stuff gurning and flapping her arms maniacally. There’s a diverting bit of audience…

Murray Lachlan Young

23 Aug 2007

When only one person in his audience (a polite reviewer) applauds a less than blazing entrance, Murray Lachlan Young positions himself somewhere between crestfallen and carefree. It’s a decade since he was propelled into mini-celebrity status for just…

Sean Hughes

23 Aug 2007

On the face of it, the stage Sean Hughes of 2007 doesn’t seem a whole lot different from the one who nabbed his first bit of fame back in 1990 as the youngest winner of the Perrier. With that boyish gaunt look still intact, he certainly doesn’t look any…

Simon Amstell

23 Aug 2007

Amstell is a good date. He makes you feel clever with his philosophical musings, draws you in with candid tales of heartache and social ineptitude and proves that his pulling power is still mighty away from the telly with tightly written, machine-gun…

Tony Lee

23 Aug 2007

Despite the title’s claim to be ‘aggressive,’ Tony Lee turns out to be a kindly softy suggesting that anyone with mental health problems and those who are very drunk shouldn’t offer themselves up as hypnotist fodder; he’s the one that would get sued.

Year of the Dog

(PG) 97min

23 Aug 2007

Talented comic screenwriter and actor Mike White (Chuck and Buck, The Good Girl, School of Rock) makes his directing debut with this low-key comedy about a loosely related group of neurotic nerds, geeks, dorks and stress monkeys living in bland suburban…

Andrew Lawrence

16 Aug 2007

Of all the descriptions Andrew Lawrence gives himself - ‘a voice like Joe Pasquale’ or ‘hair the colour of sexual rejection’ – the one that gets the biggest laugh is his ‘special needs character from a Dickens novel’. Returning after last year’s…

Hot Rod

(12a) 88min

16 Aug 2007

ROMANTIC COMEDY Originally created as a vehicle for Will Ferrell, who acts as executive producer here, Akiva Schaffer’s low-rent comedy in the Tallageda Nights/Blades of Glory mould features a number of fresh-faced Saturday Night Live alumni who are…

John Gordillo

16 Aug 2007

Acclaimed comedy writer/producer John Gordillo is not happy. Not happy with his ‘fraught relationship’, with his permanently ill girlfriend, or the London tube system, or bagpipers let loose in Edinburgh. But most of all, he’s not happy doing a free…

Maeve Higgins

16 Aug 2007

This ultra-lovely Irishwoman falls into the Josie Long school of comedy, with sweet stories, domestic references and endearingly crap Halloween-based recycling ideas. Thanks to enough well-told dark material – such as a surprise rape gag or descriptions…

Sarah Kendall

16 Aug 2007

Back in the heady days of 2004, Sarah Kendall became the first woman to receive a Perrier nomination in nine years, and deservedly so. Having taken time out to trot the globe, she returned last year with a show that was worryingly patchy and left some…

Andrew Maxwell

9 Aug 2007

There comes a point in every comic’s career where he or she must decide whether they are going to stay the joker forever or grow up and move onto doing something respectable for the rest of their life. Andrew Maxwell had a brief shot at British TV…

Carey Marx

9 Aug 2007

Holding a teddy bear aloft, Marx says, ‘I’ve got a new rape joke,’ and then proceeds to cast aspersions on little people, religious fanatics and his poor girlfriend, nicknamed ‘Elbow Face’. Scapegoating the bear when his more offside jokes fail to…

Gamarjobat

9 Aug 2007

The Japanese mime and magic duo take their street performance act inside for an hour of slapstick, spoof magic, acrobatics and guitar riffs with Rock’n’Roll Penguin. The pair waddle about like a hybrid of Pingu and Tommy Cooper and their non-verbal…

Ivor Dembina

Free fun with a lewd slant

9 Aug 2007

Those looking for some high-minded cultural reference may not get the tagline for Ivor Dembina’s show: Jewish Comedy: Free At Last. If truth be told, the veteran Jewish comic has something of a penchant for the age-old anti-Semitic stereotype of the…

Jarlath Regan

9 Aug 2007

Regan is utterly beguiling and likely to be among the most charming men you’ll meet. Self-deprecating, bewildered, and clever, he talks of hopeless government attempts to curb drinking in Ireland, his ineptitude in the workplace and with women, and a…

Own Powell

9 Aug 2007

An hour of stand-up on the subject of Starbucks doesn’t sound like everyone’s cup of java chip frappuccino. But Powell’s intense, nervy quest to track the two closest UK branches of the coffee chain actually proves quirkily entertaining. His odyssey is…

Paul Chowdhry

9 Aug 2007

Chowdhry’s world is one of discomfiting male nudity, racist jokes and Panorama reconstructions: he turned down an offer to play a suicide bomber in a reconstruction of 7/7 because the £200 fee ‘wasn’t enough to buy me a new identity’, and revolving…

Phil Kay

Impish, semi-mental charm

9 Aug 2007

For the uninitiated, the first breathless minutes of the bedraggled, beardy and rambling Phil Kay’s routine are like watching a homeless dope smoker who has accidentally wandered onstage. But as he ricochets through his tales of shoplifting, smuggling…

Seymour Mace

9 Aug 2007

If Seymour Mace was a superhero he would be called ‘Comic Book Man!’ and his special powers would be making a nerdy slide show seem entertaining and hilarious. It doesn’t sound impressive, but fortunately Mace’s Where’s Batman? is far more inventive…

Skinner & Bell

9 Aug 2007

Having given up on Narnia, Dave and Dave hole up in Uncle Brian’s country house. There, they inadvertently encourage a cow to ‘moo-icide’ and discover a motley assortment of people and creatures, including a man who stuffs animals and a…

Surf's Up

9 Aug 2007

A reasonable improvement on the heavy-handed environmentalism of last year’s hit Happy Feet, Ash Brannon and Chris Buck’s animation is a colourful parody of surfer movies and Stacy Peralta’s 2004 documentary Riding Giants in particular.

Tea and Cake

9 Aug 2007

Afternoon tea with Tiernan Douieb and Lauren Shearing is an entertaining affair. Their well-written sketches are unashamedly unafraid to push the boundaries of taste and almost enough to put the delicate off their Lady Grey. They overcome awkward…

Tony Law

Time-travelling surrealism

9 Aug 2007

As well as starring in theatre show Killer Joe , a trailer trash thriller with a cast of actors and comedians, Tony Law has what appears to be a stand-up show. It’s called Revenge of the Dog of Time and the Fringe brochure promises ‘random good fun’.

Andrew O'Neill

8 Aug 2006

Andrew O’Neill’s humour is surreal to the point of being ridiculously silly, which is why grounding it in such a subject is a stroke of genius. He calmly explains why and how he believes that a 13-year-old Winston Churchill was Victorian serial killer…

Priceless

5 Jun 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 104min The best things in life are free, but all seasoned Riviera gold digger Irène (Audrey Tautou) wants is her own credit card from an ageing sugar daddy. Meanwhile, luckless, impoverished bar tender and dog walker Jean (Gad…

Superhero Movie

5 Jun 2008

SPOOF/COMEDY (12A) 85min The presence of Airplane’s David Zucker amongst the executive producers and Leslie Nielsen amongst the cast raises hopes that Superhero Movie might offer a classier strain of parody than Date Movie or Meet the Spartans. Alas…

California Dreamin’ (Endless)

22 May 2008

DRAMA/COMEDY (15) 154min Tragically Cristian Nemescu, the 27 year-old writer-director of California Dreamin’ died in a car crash whilst working on the post-production of this richly ambitious film (together with his sound designer Andrei Toncu), hence…

Matt Groening & Various - Big Brilliant Book of Bart Simpson

22 May 2008

COMEDY (Titan Books) The boast that The Simpsons is now the longest running animated TV series of all time is a bit of a double-edged sword. For as it rolls out episode after episode, into the multiplexes and beyond, the permutations for new plot…

O Lucky Man!

8 May 2008

COMEDY/SATIRE (15) 169min (Warner Home Video) Lindsay Anderson’s 1973 masterpiece is long overdue a proper DVD release, particularly since it’s rarely shown on our television or cinema screens. In O Lucky Man!, Clockwork Orange star Malcolm McDowell…

Made of Honour

24 Apr 2008

ROMANTIC COMEDY (12A) 101min Tom (former teen heartthrob Patrick Dempsey) is a wealthy New York City playboy. Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) is Tom’s best friend and the single constant female companion in the life of a serial shagger. But when Hannah is…

Botched

10 Apr 2008

COMEDY/CRIME/HORROR (15) 94min If characters explode like tomatoes in microwaves, you’re probably witnessing the continuing rise of British splat-core comedy horror that’s had as many hits (Shaun of the Dead, Severance) as misses (The Cottage), the…

Meet the Spartans

13 Mar 2008

COMEDY (12A) 83min Date Movie and Epic Movie were unforgivable atrocities against comedy, but writer/directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer manage to deal themselves a slightly stronger hand with their latest effort Meet the Spartans, which sets…