Six Films From British Comic Geniuses That Are Fathoms Beneath Their Talents

By Matt Prigge
Add Comment Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Mar. 26, 2008

Run Fat Boy Run

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978): Bedazzled, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's first big film, was a thoroughly hilarious outing. Their Sherlock Holmes spoof made a decade later--not so much. Wasting not only the famed comic team but several aging Brit comedy legends (Spike Milligan, Hugh Griffith, etc.), Baskervilles was directed, for no discernible reason, by longtime Andy Warhol cohort Paul Morrissey. You could blame him, but then again, Cook and Moore's names are right there on the script.

Yellowbeard (1983): With notable exceptions (The Rutles, A Fish Called Wanda), the Monty Python clan have had difficulty making movies on their own; see also: Erik the Viking, Splitting Heirs and Fierce Creatures. But none is worse than this apocalyptic all-star pirate comedy instigated by Graham Chapman and Peter Cook (again!)--a Cannonball Run for the era's comedy teams (from Python to Cheech and Chong), only not nearly as funny.

Bean (1997): Any performance in which Rowan Atkinson's not cruel and acid-tongued is beneath him. This further cutting up of Mr. Bean--initially a far darker, pettier creation--is infinitely further still. Come back, Rowan.

Ali G Indahouse (2002): Sure, everyone loved Borat, but it took Sacha Baron Cohen one major stumble to get there. At least he wasted the right character.

The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse (2005): Steve Coogan and Simon Pegg may have had huge success converting to film, but such luck has eluded many other modern BBC comedy greats. The League of Gentlemen are probably the most tragic: Their dark, gory (and, at least in America, criminally underknown) show is easily the most cinematic, yet their big-screen leap takes a meta approach too strange to be familiar but too familiar to be strange.

Run Fatboy Run (2007): Simon Pegg should just stick with director Edgar Wright. Or at the very least, not get in the middle of a Michael Ian Black-David Schwimmer sandwich.

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