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How entertaining? ★★★★★
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 29 September 2012
This a movie review of SIGHTSEERS. |
“You’re not a friend, you’re just a relative,” Carol to her daughter Tina
That is a three for three for me from director Mr Wheatley: DOWN TERRACE, grubbily funny crime comedy set in a small house; and KILL LIST, nuttily brutal thriller about two hitmen caught up in something very sinister. Probably no surprise that SIGHTSEERS involves criminality. It begins accidentally and then escalates into a spree. Could the film be any more hilarious? I’m not sure. So much of it is watch-it-through-your-fingers awkwardness, and brilliant for it.
That is a three for three for me from director Mr Wheatley: DOWN TERRACE, grubbily funny crime comedy set in a small house; and KILL LIST, nuttily brutal thriller about two hitmen caught up in something very sinister. Probably no surprise that SIGHTSEERS involves criminality. It begins accidentally and then escalates into a spree. Could the film be any more hilarious? I’m not sure. So much of it is watch-it-through-your-fingers awkwardness, and brilliant for it.
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It’s a love story and road movie rolled into one, oh, and serial killer comedy. It’s the opposite of BADLANDS. We have two extremely dorky 30-somethings. Tina (Alice Lowe) lives with her manipulative mother, in the latter’s bad books, but early on we’re not quite sure why. Tina’s new boyf, Chris (Steve Oram), turns up to take her on an “erotic odyssey”. In a crummy caravan. To places like the Tram Museum and the Pencil Museum. Sexy. They are only three months into their burgeoning relationship, and their first trip away together. The two are so set in their ways and anally retentive. The humour comes from their reactions to the world around them. By the way, the leads have scripted the film too (with additional material by Amy Jump), which raises them even higher in my esteem.
They’ve been dowdied down to be as devoid of glamour as possible. Tina has prepared an evening of loving by knitting woolly underwear, including crotchless panties. Chris’s character has gone for a British stereotype of dweebdom, combining: thinning hair, ginger tresses, and having a Brummie accent. Accidentally killing someone while reversing his caravan, someone who Chris had had a run in with earlier for littering, triggers off a murderous bloodlust for all those that make him feel small. Tina, at first non-plussed, rolls with it, eventually getting in on the mayhem. While there is beaucoup blood, it adds to the extreme amusement.
“He was a pig Chris, a pig in clothes,” Tina
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