If that turns out to be the case, don’t bother flicking through the Yellow Pages to hire a zeppelin in order to find it, for Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee was merely a slice of OK cake washed down with a cup of reasonable, but unexceptional, tea.
Filmed mockumentary-style by the consistently good but never quite awesome Shane Meadows, this is the flimsy tale of an East Midlands roadie, Le Donk, and his lardy rapping bud, Scor-zay-zee, as they take a very short road trip, work with “The Arctical Monkeys”, strive to realise a long-held dream and, for Le Donk, fail to deal with his ex-girlfriend moving on.
The film perches somewhere on the same comedy ladder as This Is Spinal Tap and TV’s 'The Office', but remains several rungs below both. Le Donk, played by the always excellent Paddy Considine, is an almost David Brent-esque berk who loves the attention of having a camera crew follow him around, and while he shows himself up to be talentless, selfish and unlikeable, he’s never quite funny enough to make us forgive his disagreeable nature.
That said, it’s over in 71 minutes and has some excellent opening titles, so, you know, every cloud…*
In unrelated (and shamelessly self-promotional) news, The Incredible Suit now has what is commonly known by young people as “a Facebook page”, which means you can come out and tell the world you’re a fan of this monumental pile of old cabbages with just one relatively painless click of the mouse. Somewhere on this page is a button that says “Become a Fan”; doing so means you’ll be the first to know when there’s a new post (providing you’re constantly glued to Facebook like a laboratory teenager), and – apparently – you can even have discussions about just how peerlessly professional, staggeringly informative and bum-scratchingly thought-provoking the blog is. All of which you could just do by talking to each other, but nobody does that any more, it’s just tedious.
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* This is a David Brent quote. It’s intentional. I don’t just throw these things together, you know. I bet you didn't notice the Wordy Rappinghood gag either. Honestly, I don't know why I etc etc...
I saw this at the Watershed cinema in Bristol and Paddy and Scor-zay-zee were there for a Q&A after the film. The whole thing was more amusing after hearing them describe how it was filmed. The basis of which was Paddy and Shane having 2 backstage passes for the 'Artical Monkeys' gig at Old Trafford. When they arrived they really didn't have a pass for Scorz so they went off to film the scene which is right at the end of the film (Le Donk telling a story to the Monkeys in their dressing room). Whilst filming that Scorz genuinely blagged his way on stage with only the pretence of plugging his keyboard in! He didn't know what the Artic Monkeys looked like so he had no idea it was them when he bumped into them on the way in and asked them if there was a plug around! "Yeah, there's a nice four way around the corner" Hilarious.
ReplyDeletenice review. As a big fan of da Meadowz I'll check it out on channel 4, after typing this.
ReplyDeleteTom, that sounds like a cool thing to have seen, although a film shouldn't need a funny Q&A to make it better, surely? Bit jealous you saw the Padman though ;-)
ReplyDeleteByron, thanks as always. Hope you like it more than I did!
"the consistently good but never quite awesome Shane Meadows"
ReplyDeleteShane Meadows may have done a duff film in Once Upon A Time but This Is England and Dead Man's Shoes are truly fantastic films. I tend not to use the adjective 'awesome' as I'm not an American teenage boy stuck in the 90s but, if I did, I would describe Mr Meadows as so.
Anon, I am trying to cut down on my awesomes, apologies for letting one slip there.
ReplyDelete