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…