Starring: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Margo Stilley, and Rebecca Johnson
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Runtime: 107 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2011
| 
| 
Billed as the year’s most addictive quotable movie, this film aims at gentle comedy about two men, who go on a tour of the country’s finest restaurants in the UK. Steve Coogan works for The Observer, and has been looking forward to a gourmet trip with his girlfriend (Margo Stilley). She backs out of the arrangement at the last moment, but he needs the money from the assignment. There is no one to accompany him except Rob Brydon, and his invitation to Rob is not all that inviting, but Rob leaves his wife (Rebecca Johnson) behind to go. Rob is Steve’s best friend, but also a source of considerable aggravation. They spar with each other nearly all the time. The movie as a whole is an edited version of a number of TV episodes from a very popular series in the UK, and the film exposes us to two stand-up comedians who are expert at working flexibly and loosely with conversation. None of the dialogue looks scripted, though some of it obviously is, and the film provides an opportunity to display a well-selected range of comedy routines.
The trip begins with a mix-up in hotel reservations, and the two men have to sleep in the same bed. The two of them milk the routine, but the comedy is always gentle, and never confronting. As the restaurants roll by, the interactions between the two men become deeper and more serious, and there are shades of inner soul-searching in the way that their routines are realised. Conversations cover a range of topics, including male-female relationships, life in general, mortality, growing old, sex, and quality food and wine. The film has some laugh-aloud moments, and it contains some great one-liners, such as “the good news is that I have found the M1”. The repartee of the two men is rapid-fire, and their interactions are witty and enjoyabl.
Michael Winterbottom has worked with Coogan and Brydon in the past, and as a director he is adept at drawing humanity out of the people he directs. The movie bears some similarity to other British films, such as “Sideways” (2004), and “Local Hero” (1983), and Winterbottom draws on similar themes here to entertain. Perfectly capable of showing extreme violence (“Welcome to Saravejo”, 1997) and sexual explicitness (“Nine Songs”, 2004), Winterbottom’s style of movie realism is put to work effectively here in a much more enjoyable way.
The film is poignant in parts, dramatically loose in structure, affectionate, and threads together separate episodes of life. The two comedians work well together, and we come to know them personally as their “trip” progresses. They are constantly competing with each other with their impressions of famous people, like Michael Caine, Woody Allen, and Sean Connery. As the film develops, however, the impersonations start to take on the look of two idiosyncratic individuals imitating other people as a way of avoiding facing the truth themselves. Behind the urbane façade lie insecurity, hesitancy, conflict, and loneliness that reflect universal human characteristics. While the dramatic features of the film almost, but not quite, ignite, the movie takes you through some wonderful English scenery. The two travel with their road map through the Lake and Yorkshire Dales districts of Northern UK, and the vistas that the film’s cinematography captures are breath-taking.
This is a scenic road-trip movie, which leaves you with a whole lot of insights about the nature of comedy, male friendship, and the complexity of human relationships, and it achieves its goals with a sophisticated, critical look at gourmet dining.
One should be wary of the explicitness of the dialogue in this film. It is an unusual movie that earns this kind of rating through language. The movie is a very enjoyable one for adults, but it responsibly carries a cautionary warning for parents.
12 Random Films…
