2.5 stars (out of 5)
You really need to be diehard fan of the TV series or onto your third bottle of Bollinger to find this bigscreen version of Jennifer Saunders’ brainchild as funny as everyone involved thinks it is. But what did you expect? There’s a long and infamous tradition of ropey filmings of smallscreen faves, from the On The Buses movies to Sex And The City 2, and evidently Saunders only wrote the thing for a bet with pal/producer/cameo player Dawn French. And it shows. Sweetie.
We open abruptly at home with Edina (JS) and Patsy (Joanna Lumley) as they’re horrible to Gran (June Whitfield), Saffy (Julia Sawalha) and Saffy’s daughter Lola (Indeyarna Donaldson-Holness), who was a baby in those specials four years ago but is now mysteriously 13. It all looks awfully bland and flat under the direction of TV-intensive director Mandie Fletcher, and so the cast ham it up to compensate, with Eddie messing up a book deal, discovering that she’s essentially broke (there’s not a lot of cash any longer in only doing PR for Lulu and Emma Bunton), feeling old and fat (again) and then (it’s in the trailer) being accused of killing Kate Moss, who none-too-surprisingly plays a dim and drunk version of herself.
Ludicrous plot mechanics allow Eddie and Patsy to escape to the south of France (cue a now-unfortunate Nice joke), where the mugging cameos continue and Saunders, especially, once more bravely allows herself to look and behave in a way that no American actress would ever dare (and note the dire cameo by Jerry Hall, a.k.a. Mrs. Rupert Murdoch, who nearly portrayed Patsy in an American version of Ab Fab with Roseanne Barr until saner minds prevailed and the apocalypse was averted).
Anyway, there’s no reason to go on slandering this pretty gruesome exercise in clumsy self-indulgence, as the legion of fans out there won’t be listening, and will adore it anyway. And they’re welcome to it.
Sweetie.
I Wake Up Screening 