Review of The Magicians (2006) by Alison O — 06 Jan 2011

It's written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong. It stars David Mitchell, Robert Webb and a host of other folk who have turned up in various episodes of Peep Show. You would think then that this kind of but not really - Peep Show - the movie could barely fail to raise a smile or two. Sadly, the best it can manage is a snigger.

I'm sure the creators would defend this by saying "This isn't Peep Show the movie - it just happens to have all the same people in it and be written by the same writers but it's not Peep Show". Well, we could work that one out for ourselves. Peep Show is funny, after all.

Straight away though it becomes very hard to distance the film from the TV show as we are introduced to Mitchell and Webb's magical duo just before their break up. The characters come across as being just like Mark and Jeremy from Peep Show but without the entertaining inner monologue, which removed renders them not all that funny. Mitchell is the uptight one while Webb is the free spirit.

The plot involves the duo being brought back together to enter a magic competition which they then don't enter together and enter separately. It's the kind of story telling where some one says they did something, someone else says they didn't and that's all that's needed for the story to move along. It's pretty badly written stuff.

Webb does a slightly humourous impression of Derren Brown, which again is not as entertaining as watching the real thing, while Mitchell stumbles awkwardly through scenes with a wasted Jessica Hynes, who admittedly looks hot in an air stewardess uniform. The film really wastes it's female characters and the great Sarah Hadland and Miranda Hart are relegated to bit parts.

Thought it manages to find a handful of chuckle-worthy moments, Magicians should really have delivered laughs in spades given who was involved. It's almost as though everyone had a spare week going so they decided to quickly throw something together to entice in fans of Peep Show and maybe make a few quid.