Joanna Lumley

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie

Director: Mandie Fletcher (2016)

Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley stagger into cinemas in the big screen version of their little lamented TV show.

It’s smug, self regarding, laboured, rushed, cheap and never funny.

The pair star as champagne swilling, cash strapped, celeb haunting idiots Edina and Patsy, an obnoxious PR guru and her bessie mate magazine editor.

The characters started life as a sketch on The French And Saunders Show (1990). A sitcom series was commissioned for the BBC and ran for three series from 1992 to 1995, with intermittent specials through to 2012.

Within the first five minutes the loathsome pair have interrupted a fashion show and fallen drunk out of a taxi. So normal service is resumed.

The cackling, snorting duo cause a mini media storm when Edina accidentally pushes Kate Moss off a wall and into the Thames.

With the model presumed dead, Edina and Patsy head to Cannes to escape the media furore and find a rich husband or two.

Attempts at giving Edina some depth are laughable, but not in a good way.

Series regulars Julia Sawalha, June Whitfield, Jane Horrocks are pressed back into action for little effect, except perhaps for offering moral support to Saunders who also wrote the script.

Neither the writing and performances have aged well. Jokes involve people walking into walls, wearing funny outfits and swearing.

Adding stale references to twitter, tazers and vaping fail to freshen the air of desperation which hangs over this sorry exercise in sycophantic snivelling to the fashion industry.

There’s a legion of cameos such as Stella McCartney, Alexa Chung, Sadie Frost and Suki Waterhouse. The inclusion of people like this should be the punchline of jokes. They shouldn’t be feted for turning up and being themselves.

Fans of the show may possibly find something to enjoy but for everyone else it’s a witless, wretched waste of time and energy. Especially mine.

★☆☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

Me Before You

Director: Thea Sharrock (2016)

Get your hankies at the ready for this modern day old fashioned romantic weepie.

Based on the best selling novel by Jojo Moyes, it’s derivative, sentimental and impervious to the charms of subtlety. But it is effective.

Two fabulously attractive young people are brought together by tragedy. Once they’ve fallen in love those same circumstances threaten to tear them apart.

Sporty banker William loses the use of his legs and arms while lowly waitress Louisa loses her job. Their fates collide when she takes a job as his carer.

Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin have a hugely engaging chemistry and the film succeeds on the strength of their charm and talent.

The puppyish enthusiasm of Clarke and her incredibly expressive eyebrows contrast nicely with Claflin’s remarkably still sneer.

William teaches Louisa culture and she helps him lighten up. But his strong views on his condition threatens to cast a permanent shadow on their potential happiness.

It’s best imagined as a British version of Pretty Woman (1990) where Richard Gere is in a wheelchair and Julia Robert’s hooker is now an obliging nurse played by the ditzy younger sister of Bridget Jones (2001).

A snow clad castle dominates the chocolate box scenery as they visit the races and a concert of classical music.

It would be too easy to mock the One Nation Tory politics underpinning this twist on the Cinderella story.

It’s a fairytale world where the landed gentry casually bestow jobs on the feckless and bitter unemployed working classes. Plus there’s a singular avoidance of the practical hardships of being quadriplegic.

However Me Before You doesn’t pretend or aspire to be a movie with a social conscience.

There isn’t any ambition beyond making you smile through a bucket of tears and on that score it’s an undoubted success.

Charles Dance and Janet McTeer provide gravitas as William’s parents and Dr Who’s Jenna Coleman appears as Louisa’s single parent sister. Joanna Lumley breezes through as a fragrant wedding guest.

Clarke is famed for her frequent nudity on TV’s Game of Thrones but here keeps her curves under wraps.

This tearjerker won’t be the last performance which has Clarke’s fans reaching for the tissues.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett