Review of Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016) by Matt C — 23 Aug 2016

I know that I'm not the target demographic for Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, but I'm not the target demographic for the series either, which I really liked. I'm not a 65-year-old woman; I'm a 19-year-old man.

I've seen the first three seasons of the show--that is, all of the show before it got briefly revived in 2001--and found it to be consistently funny. The show was very much a product of the '90s but this feels like it's trying too hard to be relevant and not really trying elsewhere.

While the show was silly and freewheeling, this is stupid and meandering, anticlimactic and bland, its saving grace being the actors. Acting as a continuation of the series, nothing much has changed as Edina (Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy (Joanna Lumley, who officially does not age) are still hedonistic and obnoxious rich women, and after seeing that the champagne cabinet is empty, Edina tries to get Kate Moss as a client for her PR firm.

But when they try to greet her at a party during London Fashion Week, they accidentally knock her off a ledge into the River Thames, killing her and leading them to go on the run in Cannes. These are the shenanigans that would make for a really fun 30-minute TV episode and maybe a 45-minute special, but as a feature it just feels stretched out and unfulfilling.

There were several other people in my showing (I think that my presence brought down the average age by at least twenty years), but the theater was dead silent for a majority of the movie. It starts out fine, eliciting the type of anticipatory giggles that you let out when you're in the beginning of a comedy that you want to like, but it's all just kind of downhill from there.

Supporting characters are back with their original actors, including Julia Sawalha as Saffron, Jane Horrocks and Bubble, and June Whitfeld as Edina's mom, and they--along with the leads--are easily the best parts of the movie, even if some of them don't get much to do.

If I was amused here, it was because of Joanna Lumley, who could play this part in her sleep. Jennifer Saunders doesn't really get that much to do, which is odd since she's the main mind behind the series and wrote this script.

In fact, Saunders's script is representative of the movie's issues as a whole. Take some beloved characters, have them mess around, and hope that the movie works itself out. The story is paper-thin and although I wasn't expecting some sort of mind-bender, I at least wanted the wit and occasional heart of the show.

Edina and Patsy's remarks to others used to be razor-sharp, mean, and pointed, making the viewer detest and adore them in equal measure. Everything here feels dulled down and the bite is gone. The movie's jokes are actually odd, with tons of jokes at the expense of gay and transgender people.

I wasn't offended by them; they were just lame. Jokes about gay people were in the show, but they just in a few episodes and weren't pervasive. And as for the latter, I don't know if this was the movie's idea of staying current, but it just goes to show how dated this feels.

The direction is generic and lacks the tongue-in-cheek nature of the show, the lighting is flat, the editing is choppy, and the soundtrack is almost wall-to-wall, making it feel made-for-TV. They had money to get all of these celebrity cameos and film in the south of France, so why couldn't they hire better filmmakers? But the weirdest thing is that the movie isn't that engaging--it's almost boring--and it's just 91 minutes.

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie isn't absolutely fabulous, but at least it isn't absolutely atrocious. It exhibits the issues common to TV-to-film adaptations, and it feels like a TV episode, especially given how anticlimactic and underwhelming the ending is.

It isn't like it was Keith Lemon: The Film, but then again, it's almost an accomplishment to make something as bad as Keith Lemon: The Film. These actors are still great together and play these parts well, and as nice as it may be to see these characters again, it's too bad that they couldn't have been put into a better movie.

3.7/10, really bad, two thumbs down, far below average, etc.