"You fellers gonna draw them guns, or you gonna whistle 'Dixie'?"
"You fellers gonna draw them guns, or you gonna whistle 'Dixie'?"
Member since:16.07.2000
Reviews:41
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In my review of ‘Beowulf’ I may have intimated that it was the worst film that I had ever seen, I should have known better. No matter how bad a film is, there will be a worse one along in a moment, and this is it.
‘Guest House Paradiso’, directed by Ade Edmonson, starring Ade Edmonson and Rik Mayall, is an hour and a half of violent, lavatorial behaviour, unencumbered by any perceptible plotline or moment of real humour.
#~ The Plot ~#
The story, such as it is, revolves around Richard Twat, pronounced Thwaite, (Mayall) and his assistant, Eddie (Edmonson) as the proprietors of the cheapest and worst guest house in Britain. Sited on an unnamed windswept coast, alongside a leaky nuclear power station, Guest House Paradiso attracts only the poor and the desperate.
As Twat’s only ambition in life is to insult, humiliate and rob his guests, they are few and far between; so when the waiter is incarcerated in a mental home and the chef gets drunk and eats all the food, they depart en masse, leaving
only the resident loony, Mrs. Foxfur (Fennella Fielding).
New guests arrive, the Nice family, headed by Simon Pegg (Spaced) and a voluptuous Italian actress, Gina Carbonara who is running away from her violent boyfriend, Gino Bolognese. Inevitably he tracks her down and the cast are assembled for the finale. Which is what? Five minutes of green vomit a la ‘The Exorcist’. And that is it.
Intertwined in the story are interminable scenes of cartoon violence, sexual innuendo and schoolboy jokes about bodily functions, all of which we’ve seen and heard a hundred times before. With a running time of eighty-six minutes, you’ll think it’s three hours.
#~ What Makes It So Bad? ~#
Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson are the Peter Pans of slapstick comedy. Both part of the ‘alternative’ comedy scene of the early eighties, they came to prominence as cast members of ‘The Young Ones’, a genuinely innovative and funny TV series. They were also part of ‘The Comic Strip’ and helped write, produce and act in many of that companies best productions. As a double act they created ‘ The Dangerous Brothers’, an act that was keep them in work, in one guise or another, for the next fifteen years. ‘Filthy, Rich and Catflap’, ‘Bottom’ and even the more intelligent ‘The New Statesman’ are all derivative of ‘The Dangerous Brothers’.
Time moves on, but Rik and Ade refuse to move with it. Both in their forties now, their comedy is stuck in the rut of fart jokes, ultra violence and vomit; these are the staple fuel that keep the engine running, and they are determined to get every inch of mileage, but I think finally, the wheels have come off.
‘Bottom’ was a cheerily psychotic venture, with plenty of violence and juvenile humour tightly compressed into each thirty-minute episode. Trying to extend this to the length of a feature film was clearly beyond the directorial talent of Ade Edmonson. The film is plot less, clueless and, the worst crime of all, boring.
#~ The Good Parts ~#
Few and far between I’m afraid, and the best scenes are all stolen from somewhere else. One of the opening scenes has Eddie driving home on a motorbike, obviously the worse for wear, and his attempts to stay awake and keep control are very reminiscent of Harold Lloyd. The big vomit scene near the end was done far, far better by Mr. Creosote in Monty Python’s ‘Meaning of Life’, and generally the whole film is a downmarket, unfunny ‘Fawlty Towers’.
#~ Extras ~#
If you suffer through to the end of this travesty, you’ll be thrilled by the additional thirty minutes of ‘The Making of Guest House Paradiso’. Here you will learn how Rik and Ade suffer for their art, and how the incredible special effects were performed. A scene where Eddie flies off of a motorbike and through a window was created, incredibly, by a stunt man leaping through a window (he had to do it loads of times, ’cos Ade’s such a, like, perfectionist).
#~ Verdict ~#
One of the worst and most pointless films that I’ve ever seen, and I’m a fan. It really is time that Rik and Ade grew up and tried something different. This sort of thing is just so dated.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Comedy - Director: Tony Dow - Original Language: English - Classification: 12 years and over - Starring: John Challis, David Jason, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Tessa Peake-Jones, Gwyneth Strong
Comedy - Original Language: English - Classification: 12 years and over - Starring: Tessa Peake-Jones, Buster Merryfield, David Jason, Nicholas Lyndhurst
Comedy - Director: Richard Boden, Mandie Fletcher, Martin Shardlow - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Hugh Laurie, Miranda Richardson, Stephen Fry, Brian Blessed, Tim McInnerny, Tony Robinson, Rowan Atkinson
Nov 20th, 2001
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