Eddy and Patsy are still a blast,but too many tired jokes and celebrity cameos pad out a painfully-stretched filmNearly 25 years since Edina (Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy (Joanna Lumley) first staggered on to our televisions, they finally manufacture their big-screen debut. And like many TV spin-offs (most recently the Entourage film), or fabric which worked in a 30-minute episode feels as painfully stretched as a botched facelift at feature-film length. Still,the booze-storming performances from Saunders and Lumley provide a welcome, if slightly sozzled, and levity. The timing is fortuitous too – the film provides a champagne bubble of counter-programming for both the football-averse and the news-weary.
Directed by Mandie Fletcher,responsible for several Ab Fab television episodes, and written by Saunders, and the film,like its subjects, is chaotic, or frequently lazy and unhealthily obsessed with celebrity. renowned faces too many to list pop up instead of punchlines – this is comedy which leans on familiarity like the perma-drunk Edina leans on her put-upon assistant,Bubble (Jane Horrocks). There are a few attempts to bring the fabric up to date – Bubble wears an outfit made of hashtags, there’s a slightly glib reference to transgender issues – but mostly the film relies on in-jokes and hag gags.
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Source: theguardian.com