Well first things first. As this movie is marketed as a comedy I would like to point out all the biting and incisive wit within that us Brits are so famous for. Except I can't, because there isn't any! It shows the depths to which studios have plumbed that they actually thought this movie was a marketable commodity.
Mackenize Crook sleepwalks his way through a banal and frankly insulting script, as Paul Callow. A Dostoyevsky reading tube train driver, with aspirations to be a writer, who has killed 2 passengers in a matter of weeks and needs just one more to receive a pay off and early retirement. Oh the hilarity as he approaches an old man outside a retirement home and asks him to oblige. Our detestable and unsympathetic hero settles on Colm Meaney's Tommy Cassidy, a tramp with a terminal illness. I know my sides are splitting too! Frankly, that an actor as gifted as Meaney and the wonderful Imelda Staunton, who plays Meaney's wife, have to struggle with this rubbish is embarrassing.
It gets worse. Any director that imagines giving the awful fat gob on legs, Kerry Katona, a cameo in his film is going to lend some kind of populist gloss to his trite ideas really should throw himself under the next train to oblivion. Which is where first time director Johnathan Gershfield is surely heading after this abomination. Oh, and don't get me started on future Bond girl Gemma Arterton, she is so wooden she must vomit sawdust!
Weak script, weak acting, appalling direction and worst of all an incredibly patronising attempt to tack a pointless feel good moment of self discovery onto the loathsome main character at the end. He can write! He's cleaned his flat! I nearly puked! If you spend good money to watch this rubbish you probably will too. The most poignant moment of the whole film is when Mackenzie Crook looks out of the window of his flat, and on the sill is a copy of Joseph Heller's novel Catch 22. Now thats funny black comedy! This, excuse the pun, is a trainwreck of a movie. Avoid.
Mackenize Crook sleepwalks his way through a banal and frankly insulting script, as Paul Callow. A Dostoyevsky reading tube train driver, with aspirations to be a writer, who has killed 2 passengers in a matter of weeks and needs just one more to receive a pay off and early retirement. Oh the hilarity as he approaches an old man outside a retirement home and asks him to oblige. Our detestable and unsympathetic hero settles on Colm Meaney's Tommy Cassidy, a tramp with a terminal illness. I know my sides are splitting too! Frankly, that an actor as gifted as Meaney and the wonderful Imelda Staunton, who plays Meaney's wife, have to struggle with this rubbish is embarrassing.
It gets worse. Any director that imagines giving the awful fat gob on legs, Kerry Katona, a cameo in his film is going to lend some kind of populist gloss to his trite ideas really should throw himself under the next train to oblivion. Which is where first time director Johnathan Gershfield is surely heading after this abomination. Oh, and don't get me started on future Bond girl Gemma Arterton, she is so wooden she must vomit sawdust!
Weak script, weak acting, appalling direction and worst of all an incredibly patronising attempt to tack a pointless feel good moment of self discovery onto the loathsome main character at the end. He can write! He's cleaned his flat! I nearly puked! If you spend good money to watch this rubbish you probably will too. The most poignant moment of the whole film is when Mackenzie Crook looks out of the window of his flat, and on the sill is a copy of Joseph Heller's novel Catch 22. Now thats funny black comedy! This, excuse the pun, is a trainwreck of a movie. Avoid.