Dir.
Steve Bendelack, 2005, UK/IR, 90 mins
Cast:
Mark Gatiss, Steve Pembleton, Reece Shearsmith, David Warner
The inhabitants of the fictional Royston Vasey are facing a fiery apocalypse because their creators have grown tired of writing the nightmarish TV series, "The League of Gentlemen". The locals must save their dark and bizarre world by confronting the writers in the most decidedly unlocal of places, the real world.
There is a historically high failure rate of British TV adaptations on the big screen; for every generation defining Monty Python's Life of Brian there's at least twenty On the Buses films. The League of Gentlemen were clearly aware of this curse and have noticeably deliberately avoided a direct rerun of the series.
Apocalypse starts extremely well, with the normally unseen member, Jeremy Dyson (played by Michael Sheen) being terrorised hilariously by perennial favourites, Edward, Tubbs and Papa Lazarou (all later underused). Our most unlikely "heroes", the fugitive butcher Hilary Briss (Mark Gatiss), the scout chasing German exchange master Herr Lipp, and the loser Geoff are entrusted with the town's quest for survival, and it is their reactions to the real world that drive the film in the first half. The moment where Edward, Geoff and Papa Lazarou talk about Reece Shearsmith, who plays them all, is neatly done. But it is the kidnapping of Steve Pembleton and his replacement with Herr Lipp, the innuendo-spouting pederast, that supplies the funniest, most rewarding and bizarrely moving moments of the film. Instead of the monster of the series we're presented with him relishing his time as a family man and his sad realisation that he's a one dimensional pun machine. Purists may balk at this, but this is completely the right tack for the writers/performers to take - they've developed the character in a way that is both sympathetic and unnerving. Seeing zero Geoff almost becoming a hero works too, but less so Hilary the Sweeney-esque butcher - Gatiss seems to slip out of character on a number of occasions.
Sadly the mostly wonderful Adaptation -esque scenario is not given the screen time it needs to realise its full potential. This is in part mainly due to the introduction of a third reality, "The Kings Evil", the very script that is replacing the TV series. This late 17th Century set parody of British horror films like Witchfinder General is pleasingly large scale and cinematic, complete with gothic royal assassination attempts and singing toilet attendants who live in the crapper. The whole thing is played for some good laughs with some excellent cameos, most notably from horror stalwart, David Warner. The film-within-a-film lines are further blurred when Geoff incongruously writes himself into the script, but with a "big cock". Although clever the length of time spent in this other world does start to detract a little too much from the story proper. It even mistakenly overwhelms most of the fragmented and rushed climatic scenes. The jokes come thick and fast at this point but you would be forgiven by not caring anymore - however, the very end does redeem the film, also showing that the team should have stuck faster to the main concept. The amount of time and energy spent focused on the relatively minor parody subplot perhaps shows that The League of Gentlemen really didn't want to write for the inhabitants of Royston Vasey anymore after all.
What we are left with is an ideas and references packed film that is at times hilarious, gothic, even moving and sympathetic, that is leagues better than puerile TV offerings like Ali G in Da House and Kevin and Perry Go Large, but doesn't quite reach the feeling of a fully formed cohesive film such as Shaun of The Dead (effectively "Spaced" with zombies) and recent update of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy .
Paul Nash
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