An adoring audience is guaranteed when a cult TV show is transferred to the cinema, but if you don’t belong to the cult the movie can be a bit of a struggle. What struck me most at the screening of this that I attended was how mirthless was the row of devotees in front of me (a dozen women of a certain age). So it wasn’t just me, I figured – this really is a dud. Having only been able to take the television show in small doses – there’s a limit to how many times you can laugh at somebody falling drunk out of a car – I was never confident that the one-joke humour could be sustained over a longer period. Nor did I anticipate it being so dull and try-hard naughty.
Eddie (Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy (Joanna Lumley) are still guzzling the champers and managing to get invited to A-list parties and fashion parades, but their star is waning. Eddie is particularly disturbed by her weight problem and the fact that, professionally, she is no longer a PR dynamo. At a swank London knees-up, she accidentally bumps Kate Moss into the Thames and the famous model is not seen again, presumed dead. Eddie is now a pariah, so to escape social opprobrium and the possibility of going to jail, she and Patsy flee to a glam resort on the Mediterranean. It’s all very silly and, as has always been the case, it is punctuated by a nastiness that is never fully diluted by its unconvincing tongue-in-cheek tone (a crack about Brigitte Bardot now being in nappies is needlessly crass for mine).
According to one interview I heard, there were scores of real-life celebs falling over themselves to be included in the movie, but I only recognised a handful – Barry Humphries does a neat turn as a fat old poolside Lothario and Rebel Wilson has a terrific cameo as a rude stewardess on an el-cheapo airline – but otherwise it falls terribly flat. Ab-fab it ain’t.