Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. (15.)
Directed by Declan Lowney.
Starring Steve Coogan, Colm Meaney, Felicity Montague, Simon Greenall, Nigel Lindsay and Tim Key. 90 mins.
Despite all the chatter about the supremacy of TV over cinema, most everyone in telly would give a month of box sets sales to be big in the movies. It is a desire rooted in insecurity – they know that most things that are goggled at in wonder by people splayed out on comfy sofas mysteriously fail to pass muster when put in front of people who have paid hard cash to sit in stiff chairs. That so much that does pass muster at the movies is rubbish just adds to mystery of it all. Along with David Brent, Alan Partridge is British TV’s most potent comic creation of the last two decades (he is also the last one, along with Father Ted, we got to know accompanied by a laughter track.) There is a lot resting on his first big screen appearance – both for Coogan who has had a stop start film career and for the British public who have invested a lot of faith in Partridge and want that to be validated on the big screen.
The good news is that the film is consistently hilarious and very entertaining. The proviso is that it is good like The Simpsons Movie was good – you laugh heartily for the duration but afterwards there is still a certain deflation that after the all the build-up and expectation, that was it. Unlike Borat, South Park or The Thick Of It, the move to the big screen hasn't revealed any new dimensions to the character. The titles tell you that this is a BBC film and that is exactly what it feels like – a feature length bank holiday special.
Of course the same could be said for The Inbetweeners Movie and that made £57 million. There have been two traditional routes for the British sitcom to take to the screen. The first was to send them abroad on holiday; the other was to place them in a big movie scenario which is the route taken here, dropping Alan into the middle of a siege in his Norfolk radio station. This generates lots of laughs and allows for some Dog Day Afternoon and Sugarland Express parodies but never quite develops into anything more than The Big Idea Needed to Justify Making a Movie.
Perhaps ultimately what holds Alpha Papa (still don’t like that title) from greatness is that the character has already found its definitive, perfect expression. The first series of I’m Alan Partridge, the one where he was living in a Linton Travel Tavern, was one of the finest sitcom series ever seen on TV, up there with Fawlty Towers, the Office or the final series of Hancock’s Half Hour.
Directed by Declan Lowney.
Starring Steve Coogan, Colm Meaney, Felicity Montague, Simon Greenall, Nigel Lindsay and Tim Key. 90 mins.
Despite all the chatter about the supremacy of TV over cinema, most everyone in telly would give a month of box sets sales to be big in the movies. It is a desire rooted in insecurity – they know that most things that are goggled at in wonder by people splayed out on comfy sofas mysteriously fail to pass muster when put in front of people who have paid hard cash to sit in stiff chairs. That so much that does pass muster at the movies is rubbish just adds to mystery of it all. Along with David Brent, Alan Partridge is British TV’s most potent comic creation of the last two decades (he is also the last one, along with Father Ted, we got to know accompanied by a laughter track.) There is a lot resting on his first big screen appearance – both for Coogan who has had a stop start film career and for the British public who have invested a lot of faith in Partridge and want that to be validated on the big screen.
The good news is that the film is consistently hilarious and very entertaining. The proviso is that it is good like The Simpsons Movie was good – you laugh heartily for the duration but afterwards there is still a certain deflation that after the all the build-up and expectation, that was it. Unlike Borat, South Park or The Thick Of It, the move to the big screen hasn't revealed any new dimensions to the character. The titles tell you that this is a BBC film and that is exactly what it feels like – a feature length bank holiday special.
Of course the same could be said for The Inbetweeners Movie and that made £57 million. There have been two traditional routes for the British sitcom to take to the screen. The first was to send them abroad on holiday; the other was to place them in a big movie scenario which is the route taken here, dropping Alan into the middle of a siege in his Norfolk radio station. This generates lots of laughs and allows for some Dog Day Afternoon and Sugarland Express parodies but never quite develops into anything more than The Big Idea Needed to Justify Making a Movie.
Perhaps ultimately what holds Alpha Papa (still don’t like that title) from greatness is that the character has already found its definitive, perfect expression. The first series of I’m Alan Partridge, the one where he was living in a Linton Travel Tavern, was one of the finest sitcom series ever seen on TV, up there with Fawlty Towers, the Office or the final series of Hancock’s Half Hour.
