By Preston Wilder
It’s a sad week for comedy in Cyprus. Two examples of the genre opened at the cinema on Friday: one co-stars all the surviving members of Monty Python and is written and directed by a member of that legendary troupe, Terry Jones (it also has a voice role for the late Robin Williams); the other is a reboot of an 80s franchise that was never any good in the first place, featuring gross, witless jokes caked in blood, shit and vomit. Yet Vacation is objectively a more accomplished film than Absolutely Anything, which is ramshackle verging on amateurish. I take no pleasure in reporting this; but fair’s fair and funny, I’m afraid, is funny.
Actually, no; funny is subjective – and you may, of course, find the film hilarious. But consider (for instance) the aliens, the starting-point behind the whole movie. The aliens are a small cabal of extraterrestrial grandees who decide to put Earth to the test by granting a random Earthling unlimited powers and seeing what happens: if omnipotence is used wisely, the Earth survives, if not it gets zapped. (They’ve apparently done this before, with other planets; the planet always loses.) The Earthling in question is scruffy sad-sack Neil (Simon Pegg), who reacts to his new powers with goggle-eyed shock – but the film, having set things up, then forgets about the aliens. You’d expect it to keep cutting back to them, to gauge their reactions and let us know how the planet is doing, but no. Even when Neil gets hijacked by a mad American colonel (Rob Riggle) who forces him to use his powers for ridiculous ends – e.g. making all British bobbies wear pink uniforms – there’s no shot of disgruntled aliens wondering what Neil is playing at. That’s just bad writing, in my opinion.
Riggle’s character is a carbon copy of Kevin Kline’s unforgettable Otto from A Fish Called Wanda – the same psychotic behaviour and open contempt for Brits – which of course was written by Jones’ fellow Python John Cleese, but it’s worth recalling that Cleese himself ended up with a fiasco when he tried to repeat the Wanda formula in Fierce Creatures. Comedy is horribly elusive; people can be funny for years then, mysteriously, lose their mojo and stop being funny. The entire Python gang lend their voices to the aliens – yet the result is undistinguished, even when Cleese says “Botheration!” in his best Basil Fawlty and the rest are calling each other by Essex-girl names like ‘Sharon’ and ‘Kylie’.
The film, I suppose, is lightly likeable. Simon Pegg makes a suitably frantic Everyman, Kate Beckinsale a suitably serene object of desire. Like all careful-what-you-wish-for stories, it mines some chuckles from the gods’ literal-mindedness: “Weather, be like in LA!” commands Neil, faced with a typically grey London morning – and his powers plunge the city into darkness because, after all, it’s night-time in LA. Eddie Izzard steals every scene as Neil’s boss, finding acres of disdain in the word ‘feckless’. But too much of Absolutely Anything is simply lame, lacking inspiration or energy or however one describes that elusive something. Jokes about Facebook and the BBC, Neil wishing he was US President and having to dodge assassins’ bullets, Neil arranging for his Indian friend to be “worshipped” by the girl he fancies – only for the man to be literally worshipped, with shrines and disciples and everything.
The joke there, incidentally, seems to derive from the fact that the friend is Indian – shading close to political incorrectness and raising another issue: Terry Jones is 73. “How ill white hairs become a fool and jester,” wrote Shakespeare – and the Bard, as usual, was correct because comedy (for whatever reason) is a young person’s game. From Steve Martin to the Marx Brothers, from Billy Wilder to Woody Allen to the ZAZ crew, laughs dry up (even if careers remain successful) as one gets older. Is it just reflexes getting slower? Do older people love the world too well to lampoon it? Do we start to dwell too much on mundane things (or, unconsciously, on Death)? Hard to say, but OAP humour – at least on film – tends to be embarrassing. Absolutely Anything is the comedy equivalent of dad-dancing.
Like a stopped clock being right twice a day, the film made me laugh exactly twice. Once at a bitchy putdown by Joanna Lumley that’s too good to spoil here (unfortunately, it turns out to be the last thing she says in the movie), and once – rather shamefacedly – when Neil wishes for what most men would wish for, “a penis that women find exciting”. The wish comes true, with one small adjustment: “Can I have it in white?”. The rest is cringeworthy – and I guess I’d rather gag at Vacation’s vulgar excretions than cringe at the sight of former idols telling bad jokes. Sad, really.
DIRECTED BY Terry Jones
STARRING Simon Pegg, Kate Beckinsale, Rob Riggle
UK/US 2015 85 mins
