March 28, 2015

Finest Hour 127, Summer 2005

Page 44

Churchill: The Hollywood Years, directed by Peter Richardson. British television comedy starring Neve Campbell, Christian Slater, Harry Enfield, 85 minutes.

CALLING upon scientific method to deduce how funny this movie is, I’m using a new measure of “funniness” that is simply measured by “laughs per joke.” Director Richardson is famous for the late-night TV comedy Stella Street, an extreme “hit-and-miss” programme whose laughs per joke ratio usually registers 0.2 (a fifth of the jokes are funny). This is pretty bad, but in laughs per joke Churchill: The Hollywood Years is came out 0.13—ridiculously low for a feature film.

Forget science. What can one say about a movie whose premise is that Churchill was actually an after-dinner speaker and character actor called Roy Bubbles?—or includes a joke about Hitler driving a car into a wall? What could one say about a movie that tries to take one of the grimmest periods of modern history and turn it into a comedic farce?

One could say “congratulations” because, despite being a patched-up, nonsensical sequence of tenuously connected sketches, there are genuinely a few decent laughs to be had. It will provide a decent evening’s light entertainment, thanks to the comedic talents of Harry Enfield, Phil Cornwell, Dave Clifton and Vic Reeves, who embellish the film with its few memorable scenes. Once you’ve realised after the first five minutes that this is not going to be a conventional experience —once you have accepted that and somewhat changed your expectations —then the rest is plain sailing and rather enjoyable.

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Mr. Nikbin’s review is from Felixonline (www.felixonline.co.uk), the student on-line magazine of Imperial College.