Review of Sightseers (2012) by Blake L — 01 Dec 2012

Sightseers is the story of two lovers going on a caravan trip. Sounds boring right? Well it ain't. At all. Especially when the caravan trip turns into a murdering spree over stuff as trivial as littering and dog fouling.

Chris (the ginger faced man, or Steve Oram) wants to show girlfriend Tina (angry woman, doesn't get out much, Alice Lowe) around some of the sights of the country in his caravan. Things soon become clear that Chris isn't the man Tina thought he was as murderers start popping up in suspicious circumstances, and often time hilarious circumstances.

Tina's sheltered life leaves her confused as to what exactly to do with this information (although talk of handing him into the police is kept to....well it's never mentioned). Chris philosophy is built on murdering for a reason, again with hilarious results.

The fact that the murders are ofen downplayed here makes for the fun of it and it helps the film has the cutest animal in a film this year in the stolen dog Banjo (or Poppie, watch out for Poppie's death, hilarious and brutal at the same time).

This is ultimately a British film and what we do well is deadpanning. And everything is deadpanned here. Rarely do we see any character have so much as excitement (apart from the hen party maybe). And its the downplaying of everything which makes it so funny.

Sightseers might not be to everybody's tastes but it's worth a watch just because it's so ridicolous, and ridicolusly British.