Comedy, Reviews, Niki Boyle
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Blancanieves
26 Feb 2013
1920s set silent take on the Snow White story, with seven bullfighting dwarves
It’s going to be difficult to get through a review of Blancanieves without mentioning The Artist, so let’s get it out of the way now. Both films are European, black and white, reduced format silent films in romanticised 20th century period settings.
Spring Breakers
22 Feb 2013
Harmony Korine's ludicrously bad drama about four girls gone wild on spring break
Incoherent, brash and self-consciously 'arthouse' in execution, Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers is an intriguing cinematic spectacle: an awful film that seems aware – nay, aggressively boastful – of its own awfulness. It follows a quartet of…
The History of Future Folk
22 Feb 2013
Charming but slight sci-fi music comedy in the vein of Flight of the Conchords
Cosmic-folk twosome Future Folk started life on the underground New York music scene, playing acoustic guitar-and-banjo tunes with sci-fi lyrics to crowds of bemused punters. The gentle whimsy and a focus on music rather than jokes puts their foot…
John Dies at the End
20 Feb 2013
Self-conciously bizarre cult comedy offering from director Don Coscarelli
Penned by Senior Editor at Cracked.com David Wong (real name Jason Pargin), the 2009 novel John Dies at the End was a comedy-horror tornado of cultural references, paranormality and winking self-awareness. Cult filmmaker Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, Bubba…
Starbuck
28 Nov 2012
Likeable but flawed comedy drama about a prolific sperm donor
David Wozniak (Patrick Huard) is a loser. He works – barely – at his dad’s butcher shop; he neglects his girlfriend Valerie (Julie LeBreton); he’s borrowed money from gangsters to start his own domestic pot farm, and is unable to pay it back. On top of…
Grassroots
13 Nov 2012
Eminently dislikeable political comedy starring Jason Biggs
There’s a lot of things going for Grassroots. It’s a political comedy timed for release when US election fervour is at its peak; it focuses on the same type of community-led campaigning that won Barack Obama his first term; it has the feelgood status of…
Stitches
26 Oct 2012
Poorly handled killer clown comedy-horror starring Ross Noble
Teenager Tom (Tommy Knight) is an uptight, nervous wreck. After a traumatic experience at a childhood birthday party, at which a scuzzy kids’ entertainer named Stitches (Ross Noble) was accidentally killed, he’s grown up to be a pill-popping neurotic…
A Few Best Men
10 Sep 2012
Risible UK/Australian comedy rife with missed opportunities
David (the improbably named Xavier Samuel) returns to London following a backpacking jaunt down under. It’s only temporary though – while abroad he met the love of his life, Mia (Laura Brent), and impulsively proposed to her. He’s come back to ask his…
Keith Lemon: The Film
30 Aug 2012
Atrocious feature-length character comedy from Leigh Francis
Keef Lemon (his real name’s Leigh Francis, innit?) is ‘avin’ this dream where he’s shaggin’ Kelly Brook (bang tidy!) right but then he wakes up and realises it was just a dream an’ he’s actually in that London to sell his invention, the SecuriPole…
Luke Benson - Backseat Hero
21 Aug 2012
Deadpan delivery and thin material get lost in the void
Bravely diverging from the ‘genial Geordie’ archetype, Luke Benson (aka Skywalker aka The Bensonator) has a deadpan, monotone delivery that fits well with his tales of urban discontent and gangly outsiderness (he’s 6’ 7”). Unfortunately this nuance is…
Al Pitcher - Tiny Triumphs
21 Aug 2012
A funny if unchallenging appreciation of life’s little amusements
Most people are too busy to stop and appreciate life’s small absurdities, but not Al Pitcher. He spends his days taking photos of things that amuse him, then presents a slideshow of his results at that evening’s performance. It’s a performance style…
Going Green the Wong Way
17 Aug 2012
Joyous but ultimately pointless one-woman eco-show
Joyous but ultimately pointless one-woman eco-show Displaced San Franciscan Katrina Wong is a dedicated environmentalist: her school-age performance poetry about the rape of Mother Earth gave way to her first job canvassing for conservationist…
Tom Cottle’s These Twisted Folk
13 Aug 2012
Shambolic comedy play where the only laughs are accidental
It’s not an encouraging start when the best thing you can say about a play is that they handled their mishaps well. Unfortunately, that’s about all Tom Cottle’s These Twisted Folk has going for it, and as the act becomes more polished over the course of…
Mark Little: THEbullshitARTIST
13 Aug 2012
Mis-marketed spoken word ramble lacking in structure
Halfway through Mark Little’s rambling, hazily political spoken word show, a surly heckler is ejected. As an usher removes him, Little remarks (somewhat apologetically), ‘I guess you must’ve come to the wrong show, mate.’ From the exit, the punter…
Ian D Montfort
9 Aug 2012
Pseudo-psychic satire that has its cake and eats it too
Having effectively retired his hospital radio DJ Ivan Brackenbury, Tom Binns returns to the Fringe with one of his fresher character creations: Sunderland psychic Ian D Montfort. It’s a spot-on satire of the cult of cold-reading, with Montfort’s…
Obsession - A Life with Magic
7 Aug 2012
Winning performance Ian Kendall, whose obsession with magic stems from Asperger’s Syndrome
Ian Kendall sits front and centre as the audience files in, greeting everyone in turn and encouraging people to fill up the front rows. He throws in a few neat tricks while people are still entering; it’s this casual attitude to performing a set is what…
Chris Dugdale: 2 Faced Deception
7 Aug 2012
Overly slick presentation with rehashed tricks
If you haven’t caught a whiff of Chris Dugdale’s act before, his opening gambit may well blow you away. Unfortunately, if you have seen it, you’re in for a tedious introductory ten minutes, as he rehashes his most famous work over again (and then…
Doug Segal: How to Read Minds and Influence People
7 Aug 2012
Refreshingly open and honest take on the Derren Brown formula
Doug Segal does not beat around the bush – from the off, he tells us that his ability to ‘read minds’ is in fact an elaborate system for planting information in people’s heads, drawn from his past experiences in the fields of psychology and advertising.
Alan Hudson’s Not So Secret World of Magic
7 Aug 2012
A look back at a life in magic is packed with warm reminiscence, if light on tricks
More of a biography-with-tricks than an out-and-out magic show, Alan Hudson’s show is a must-see for any novice magician. Tracing a career from schoolyard sleight-of-hand through kids parties, cruises, weddings and comedy clubs, nice guy Hudson throws…
Panga
6 Aug 2012
Well-acted comedy lacking in subtlety and originality
Lucy’s life is in a rut: she drinks too much, her flat is a state and her dull, grey-suited boyfriend Gordon no longer shares her fun-loving, hedonistic attitude. The strain on their relationship intensifies with the arrival of Panga – a drinking…
Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie
27 Jun 2012
The comic duo’s first film is a brutal satire of Hollywood but sadly lacks laughs
Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie is perhaps the worst comedy since Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered. Like Freddy, Billion Dollar Movie features a cult TV comedy act directing a feature film for the first time, and going overboard with bad taste…
Rent-a-Cat
21 Jun 2012
Charming but occasionally repetitive comedy from Japan
Sayoko (Mikako Ichikawa) has a knack for attracting cats. She has so many around her house that she starts renting them out to lonely fellow citizens in need of a little companionship. What nobody knows about Sayoko (except for her exceptionally blunt…
Mirror Mirror
5 Apr 2012
Snarky re-telling of the Snow White myth, with the odd visual flourish
Tarsem Singh is a frustrating director; he has a canny eye for striking imagery, but an uncanny knack for picking scripts with little or no charm (The Fall being his sole exception so far). So it was with J-Lo vehicle The Cell and Clash of the Titans…
Wanderlust
7 Mar 2012
Charmless comedy painfully short on jokes, starring Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston
The actors in Judd Apatow’s Comedy Stable™ have an unfortunate habit of lulling you into a false sense of security. They’ll star in a string of likeable comedies that manage to poke fun at their subject matter (unplanned pregnancy, 40 year old virgins…
Electric Man
8 Feb 2012
A patchy, if well intentioned, Edinburgh-set comic comedy
(12A tbc) 98min Shot in Edinburgh on a micro-budget, comic shop comedy Electric Man declares its intentions from the off: this is to be no social realist kitchen sink drama, typical of the UK film industry, but rather a light-hearted love-letter to…
