The film is a live performance in the style of a 1940’s radio play complete with a man making all the special effects noises. A partisan L.A. audience laps it up but I didn’t laugh at all, at the puerile humour which is usually my thing.
Eric Idle wrote and starred in the film and plays a piano which charts the decline of the British Empire. He’s not a piano, but wears a piano key tie so that we remember he is the constant who relates and narrates the story whilst the cast ham it up as various characters.
The plot is wafer thin and serves only to get a few songs in as well as barrels of innuendo and funny voices. Tracey Ullman was probably the best value doing good voice work and clearly getting into the spirit of things. You also get Jane Leeves and Big Suze as a pair of sisters and Russell Brand as the titular Dick who manages to make the part his own, in his usual style.
You also get Eddie Izzard as an Indian manufacturer of rubber dildos and Billy Connolly as a police inspector cum private eye who has a lisping voice that he at least finds very funny. You also get Tim Curry and Jim Piddock who mostly just do funny voices and patch the whole thing together.
A couple of the songs were decent but the whole thing just seemed awfully lazy with characters called ‘Bastard’ and Dickhead’ for example. There were also old jokes on parade with the Indian Regiment called ‘The First Foot & Mouth’ © ‘Carry on up the Khyber’ and someone saying ‘I opened the door in my pyjamas - why was there a door in my pyjamas?’ - yawn.
The runtime of 80 minutes may seem short but it does drag on once you get an idea of the humour and writing on show. It’s a great cast who are clearly enjoying themselves; it’s just a shame they didn’t invite the viewer along.
Brand and Connolly were unintelligible in places and you have to wonder what the American audience made of them. Funny eccentrics I guess, but I was cringing at the mirth free and faintly embarrassing wacky antics on show.
It may have been a good night out after a few beers but as a Netflix offering it fell flat with a lot of the seemingly period humour already dated - Berlesconi ‘bunga bunga’ references anyone? Actually it would probably have been painful to see live as a lot of transitions were added in to show flashbacks as well as caption cards, which suggested the whole thing was edited down to afford the audience at home a small measure of mercy.
For me this was a self indulgent and unfunny mess that offered no laughs, but if you want to see some of your favourite comedians ham it up, fill your boots. You’ll just never convince me that saying ‘dick’ as a euphemism for ‘penis’ 200 times qualifies as entertainment.
Best Bit : Not Russell Brand’s Dick ‘W’ Rating 8/23
