Oh great, this is one of my favourites, and I
can't have seen it since this DVD came out in 2005. A road movie about a young
man on the run, it looks and feels more like a Euston Films Armchair Cinema
than a comedy. Its greatly helped by Keith Allen's performance as Gino.
Despite Allen's hell raising reputation he was perhaps the best of the
Comic Strip team at quiet muted acting. He's very good at holding the viewer's
attention and understanding over the long stretches of the film where Gino has
little dialogue and responds instinctively to events, keeping inconspicuous
while looking over his shoulder for how to get out of peril.
What Allen does is funny because we emphasise with his situation, whereas the people whom he encounters on the run and who block his path have their outlandish and grotesque sides. They're all well-drawn cameo characters, making good use of what the performers can do, both the team members and guest actors like Lionel Jeffries. Adrian Edmundson's intense playwright ("Do you like plays for young people?") feels like the sort of condescending adult who I might have met in London Youth Theatres in the early nineties.
What Allen does is funny because we emphasise with his situation, whereas the people whom he encounters on the run and who block his path have their outlandish and grotesque sides. They're all well-drawn cameo characters, making good use of what the performers can do, both the team members and guest actors like Lionel Jeffries. Adrian Edmundson's intense playwright ("Do you like plays for young people?") feels like the sort of condescending adult who I might have met in London Youth Theatres in the early nineties.
Gino (Allen) hides under a table in the playwright's living room when he sees the police in the front garden. Oblivious to the danger, the playwright (Edmundson) starts to read his script to his captive:
"This is a good bit - This guy is about your age and he meets a sailor at the pub. He says, 'I bet she's good at it!', nodding to the girl at the bar. 'Sailor: Not me, mate, I'm queer! What d'you see in girls? I don't know' - it's supposed to be north country, I can't do the accent..."
One of my favourite comedy scenes, that. One thing
that makes it sing is how Adrian Edmundson's intonation perfectly
captures the speech patterns of a London man of the left who would have been
born in about 1940.
Alanah Pellay's camp performer who needs get to Capital Radio in half an hour in Gino's stolen cab is a sympathetic character. I always find the rather caring way that the two men respond to each other quite touching (Gino does get Pellay to the studio, Pellay notices Gino's cuts and is solicitous). There's nothing sympathetic about the Rik Mayall character, though - perhaps the most convincingly repellent part that he ever played - and in just a few well-judged shots and lines Dawn French conveys the hell of their marriage very well.
There's a terrific sense of actual place in this film, from the warren of suburban roads where Gino tries to escape on foot, to the recognisable but now-changed 1983 Central London seen through the Taxi windows, to the blank Essex beach and countryside sped through by Robbie Coltrane's wrecked drunken driver. The combination of place, immediately involving situation, well-considered characterisation and understanding of what special qualities every performer could bring to the production always make this one a pleasure to watch.
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