Rich On Ali G

Rich on Reception goes to the movies

There's a new trend in cinema at the moment, in this country at least. Over the last few years, the most notable British exports seem to have been period costume drama things.

I'm not going to lie and pretend that I enjoy watching that sort of film because I don't. In fact I think it's bloody boring. But it keeps the Americans highly entertained and that's where the money is, I guess. This makes it all the more confusing when the latest trend is to turn mediocre British comedy into big-screen fare.

Comedies like Mr Bean, which have made it in America, will do well, but what about the ones that barely raise a snigger over here? Comedy 'legends' like Harry Enfield and Rik Mayall have turned their comic creations into big-screen 'stars' in the last couple of years, in the hope they'd somehow find a laugh, and more importantly, a bucket-load of cash.

But none of the big-screen transformations have really worked, mostly because they're not very funny. Harry Enfield stopped being funny when the other guy left and started The Fast Show. And Rik Mayall stopped being funny when we realised every joke he ever told could be traced back to a show he did in the early Eighties.

Boyz parody

Ali G, however, is new. He's popular, fresh and funny. At least he was when he burst onto the scene, the best part of three years ago. The decision to put him onto cinema screens needed to be well thought through. His TV series received a luke-warm reception and his popularity had dwindled somewhat. But while the iron's hot, the money men will strike. And strike they did.

Like so many before him Sacha Baron Cohen has taken his small-screen idea to the cinema. Ali G In Da House was inevitable really. As is the fact it's really not going to be that good. The alleged plot sees Ali's rise to prominence in parliament. Yeah, I know. To be fair, the plot isn't supposed to be important and you shouldn't take it seriously. Ali goes from demonstrating about his beloved youth centre closing to becoming the Prime Minister's right-hand man. Out of all the plots they must have scrawled on a post-it note, I can't quite comprehend why this one was chosen. I guess it didn't matter as long as there was a platform for the jokes. On that basis the jokes need to be really, really funny.

It opened so promisingly. A quality set piece involving Ali and a slow-motion US shoot-out against some real 'home boys'. Parodying films like Boyz In The Hood would have been a good move. But then Ali wakes up and we get our first masturbation joke. That was the point at which it started to go a little awry.

Sketch show

Obviously it is important to know the background of the character and for those that do, you'll be pleased to finally see Me Julie and the Westside Massive, which for me provided the best moments of the film. Ali's scenes with his own 'crew' are what I was hoping to watch, but it wasn't to be. Within 15 minutes the story turns to a 'fish out of water' thing - which seemed crazy to me because it was when he was IN his water that the film worked.

Much like a sketch show, it really is a hit-and-miss affair. I often found myself smiling, but never really laughing. I appreciated some of the more original jokes, but found there were far too many that didn't work at all. And with a film like this, there's not a lot else I can say. I could definitely picture this being a decent video to watch, especially if you've had a drink on a Friday night. With a group of mates, maybe I would have just enjoyed the silliness of it all.

On the acting front, two classic Brit actors were roped in for the straight man roles. Michael Gambon plays the nice guy Prime Minister and Charles Dance does his best as the evil bad guy. I kept wondering if maybe they used the same duping techniques employed for the mock interviews on TV. I really don't get how they got themselves caught up in this. Dance's final appearance at the end of the movie summed it up. It just wasn't funny. But very, very embarrassing.

Lowest toilet humour

The other performances are fine. The East Side Massive crew were genuinely amusing, as was Ali's own crew. A couple of set pieces towards the end had moments of comic genius, but were soon trampled to death by another gay sex joke.

Unlike Baron Cohen, Steve Coogan used an original character as a tool to show off his abilities in The Parole Officer and, being relatively inoffensive, it worked. The same applied to Wayne's World, when Mike Myers took a character from a sketch show and made 90 minutes of entertainment out of it. But the funniest Ali G moments in the past were when he made a fool out of someone. His own idiocy is usually outweighed by that of the people he is poking fun at. But that is not what this film is, it's a script and Ali needs to be funny on his own.

So it ends up more like an extended sketch show. The humour is toilet humour at its lowest; gay sex and masturbation top the list followed closely by marijuana jokes. But almost everything has been done elsewhere to better effect. I'm in the age group that I assume this film is targeting but I have to admit, I was cringing with embarrassment at times. A complete lack of irony doesn't help. The jokes come across as "Poo... poo's always funny! Laugh, people, you must laugh!" But I didn't. Some people around me did but I think they might have just put subtle canned laughter in the surround sound speakers.

When a movie has a bit after the end that you should stick around for, I'd usually advise you to do just that: this time, I'd say leave as soon as you think it's the end and pretend you didn't know there was any more. Ali G may have brought the house down, but he was still in it.

Rich
Unit 2 Reception
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