First Hit: At times very funny, insightful and interesting and at other times repetitively slow.
This film is about two friends, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, on a road trip through northern England to tour the finest restaurants.
Originally Steve was to do this trip with his girlfriend Misha (played by Margo Stilley) but she left him before the trip started, so Steve contacts Rob to go with him. Interestingly they are both very different in their lives as we learn while watching them on the trip, but they also share some aggravating habits and behavior.
The first joke to me was that they were on a road trip to taste the fine cuisine of England. Although there are some fine restaurants in England, the country isn’t known for its fine food, not like France or Italy.
The differences in their lives is expressed in how Rob is happily married to a woman who loves, understands and accepts him. They have a baby daughter and when we watch him converse with his wife over the phone, we feel his love.
Steve, on the other hand, is separated from a woman he loves. He is very jealous and insecure when we see him converse on the phone with her and then he turns around and sleeps with other women he runs into while on this trip. In those scenes we get the sense of how meaningless these encounters are because all we see of the intimacy is the woman leaving in the very early morning and Steve’s non-caring look.
They both are actors, comedians and impressionists. Steve longs for a big film role and Rob is quite happy with his “little man in a box” routine. Rob’s forte is impressions which are on display non-stop throughout the film. Some of them we have to hear over and over and over again. Steve is quite sarcastic to his friend and challenges him with his own version of the same impressions (one ups man-ship). They get a little testy during these exchanges over dinner but they are quite happy when they are singing songs together while driving.
Steve has a penchant for sharing his knowledge whether anyone else wants to hear it or not. His comeuppance is when he climbs a rock and gets bridled by an elderly gentleman who knows everything there is to know about the rocks they are standing on. Don’t think Steve quite gets that he is just like this intruder but the audience does. In the end, Rob goes home to his loving family and Steve goes home to his cold empty flat.
Coogan is pretty much himself I think. I don’t know him but it didn’t seem like this was a role for him but just showing up as he is. The same thing can be said about Brydon. Again I don’t know him, but the film seem to express these two as they are. Stilley had a short and somewhat lifeless part as the woman who loves Coogan, would like to settle down with him, but sees that he is still searching for his inner peace. Coogan, Brydon and Claire Keelan wrote this script and I dare say it was a bit longer than needed. Although I thought the Woody Allen impressions were the highlight, 6 less Michael Caine impressions would have made it work better. Michael Winterbottom directed this and overall did a good job of giving the look and feel of northern England and British humor.
Overall: This was an OK film with some very funny parts but a bit long overwrought.