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.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
