In a league of their own
Upon hearing the news that The League of Gentlemen were attempting to branch out onto the silver screen, Edward’s immortal words “Don’t worry Tubbs, they won’t get far!” immediately sprang to mind. Thankfully these fears were unfounded; a lot of thought has gone into bringing about the transition, creating a thoroughly entertaining comedy.
When the creative minds behind The League of Gentlemen decide not to write the show anymore and instead concentrate their efforts on an unrelated project, they inadvertently instigate the coming of the apocalypse for Royston Vasey and its grotesque inhabitants. The only hope is for the show’s characters to travel into the real world and try and encourage the show’s creators to write again.
And that’s before things start to get complicated… The characters (mostly played by the three lead actors), jump between the alternate realities of Royston Vasey, the real world as we know it and (pay attention now) the horror film that The League of Gentlemen are writing instead of the show.
Whilst the whole film-within-a-film-versus- a-television-series-within-a-film set up could have been an incoherent mess, the audience never loses track of what is going on thanks to expert handling by Bendelack. With a huge cast of characters to choose from, many have been omitted from the film in order to create a leaner narrative.
The main body of the story concerns only three characters from the show, fugitive butcher Hilary Briss, angry malcontent Geoff Tipps and Herr Lipp, a German teacher with a penchant for double entendres and young boys. The show’s ‘big-hitters’ Edward, Tubbs and Papa Lazarou appear only for a couple of, admittedly hilarious, minutes (Lazarou coughing up a hair ball is perhaps the cinematic highlight of recent years) but soon disappear once the story gets underway.
However, any disappointment this may cause will soon be forgotten thanks to the quality of everything else on offer. For example, the film within the film, The King’s Evil, is a very neat send-up of British horror films such as Witchfinder General featuring some great Ray Harryhausen style stopmotion animation.
In a time where films like Scary Movie irritatingly insist on lampooning any pop culture that’s recent and easily recognisable, it’s good to see a group of film-literate filmmakers working a little harder to find more interesting targets for their spoofery.
Ultimately though, the film succeeds for the same reason as the TV show; lying beneath the superficially bad taste exterior of toilet humour and gay-orientated jokes lies a core of sparkling creativity and powerful, poignant, satirical spite. Finally we see the film that should have been called The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
19th May 2005