"Dead on Time" is a British comedy short film from 1983, so this one will have its 35th anniversary next year. It runs for slightly over an hour and one of the two writers is Rowan Atkinson, who is of course also the lead actor. This is one of his early works as he was still under the age of 30 and did not play his career-defining roles as Blackadder and of course Mr. Bean yet. I may be bit biased as I am probably not the biggest Atkinson fan as I really only liked 1 or 2 Mr. Bean clips from the stuff I have seen from him. Okay, back to this one here: He plays a man who finds out he has only 30 minutes to live or does he really. The events at the end felt somewhat boring, predictable and uninspired and yet these are the only scenes when the black humor is at least slightly working. I must say that hardly anything was funny in here, which is indeed a disappointment as the co-writer is Richard Curtis and I normally like his stuff more and he worked on this one here a long time before his Oscar nomination. Director is Lyndall Hobbs and I and probably almost everybody else won't recognize her name. British audiences may have heard the names of some supporting players though, like Hawthorne's, Everett' or Bull's. But they cannot get this one to work either. For the very biggest Atkinson fans only and I give it a thumbs-down.
Review of Dead on Time
