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Blu-ray Review


DVD cover

Absolutely Anything

 

Starring: Simon Pegg, Kate Beckinsale, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Rob Riggle, Eddie Izzard Joanna Lumley, Terry Jones, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin, Eric Idle and Robin Williams
Distributor: Lionsgate UK
RRP: £TBC
Certificate: 15
Release Date: 07 December 2015


Now here’s a weird thing. You gather together some of the best comic minds of their generation to make a comedy film, securing the Pythons, Simon Pegg, Robin Williams, Eddie Izzard, Joanna Lumley et al and you get Terry Jones to direct. It should be a blinding success, but in the case of Absolutely Anything (2015. 85 mins) this turns out to be far from the truth.

Pegg plays bored and disinterested teacher, Neil Clarke, who lives with his dog, Dennis (Robin Williams) and who hankers after the attractive woman Catherine West (Kate Beckinsale) who lives downstairs from him. Not much goes his way until aliens decided to give him the power to be able to do absolutely anything. How he uses this newly bestowed power will determine whether the Earth is deemed worthy of survival or if it will be destroyed.

There are the usual initial nob jokes, which are amusing, and there is the occasional funny turn by Izzard as the headmaster and Sanjeev Bhaskar as Ray, who turns in the best performance of the film, but overall the film fails to amuse and falls flat on its face.

There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, it’s incredibly similar to Bruce Almighty (2003), but lacks the frenetic performance of Jim Carrey, nor does the film produce a standout moment like Bruce mucking around with Steve Carell’s character as he tries to read the news. Secondly the character of Catherine’s obsessive ex-boyfriend, played by Rob Riggle is more caricature and the wrong side of funny.

The film commits the cardinal sin of being a comedy which is basically not that funny and not even the inclusion of Robin Williams as Neil’s dog, Dennis can save the day.

The film is presented with an aspect ratio of 2.39:1 with a DTS-HD Master Audio Surround 5.1 track, which includes optional English for the Hard of Hearing.

The extras kick off with If You Could Do Anything, What Would It Be? (2 min, 09 sec) has the cast and crew answering the question. Creating The Aliens (6 min) has the production designer going through the creative choices made in trying to incorporate some of the visual clues based on the Python actors. Find out Everything about Absolutely Anything (10 min, 25 sec) is the main ‘making of’ piece. Mojo Interviews the Cast (5 min, 30 sec) has the dog interviewing the main cast. Mojo the Dog (4 min, 47 sec) looks at Mojo who plays Dennis and last of all there are short cast interviews (33 min, 42 sec) with Terry Jones, Simon Pegg, Kate Beckinsale, Joanna Lumley Eddie Izzard and the Producers.

I really wanted to like the film and perhaps, given the talent involved, expectations were high, unfortunat6ly the final product in no way is representative of the talent of those involved.

5

Charles Packer

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