You know what happens to sitcom writers and stars they come to think they are talented despite their output being generally insipid but un-challengingly suited to 25 minute TV slots. The League of Gentlemen given millions produced a movie so bad no one saw it bar the critics. After the pair who ‘star’ in the anaemic Gavin and Stacey got a budget and made the execrable ‘Lesbian Vampire Hunters’ you’d have thought Whitehouse and Enfield would have avoided turning The Scousers into a 90 minute movie in two halves.
Instead not only did they extend the seemingly one joke sketches into a movie but they inflected it on a live stadium audience in Liverpool. The film turning the premise into 22 men on a football field screaming “Calm Down Calm Down Calm Down” repeatedly as morons squared off every 5 minutes. To add to the supposed comedy a Fat Spanish Waiter and a miserable Scot ineffectively signalled for everyone to play the game.
Under the preliminary title of the ‘Ugly-side Derby’ the joke wore off long before the opening credits had run.
They also decided to try to satirise the Austin Powers films with an attempt to re-create the diet coke of E-V-I-L scene with Cahill and Mascherano – Cahill as Scotty is far too hursute despite being completely evil on a football field so the joke fell flat. Indeed many of us just wished these two Pantomime villains would have been sent off rather than the two Horse rear ends that were.
The only thing that came off was irony. Recently promoted due to his morality vice Captain of England Steven Gerrard was booked for a cowardly tackle – art imitating life as for the 2nd time this year he attacked someone much smaller than himself with 9 mates about him because he was scarred – the jury of one showed him a Yellow card this time.
In my view Whitehouse should stick to commercials for insurance companies who don’t compete on price by avoiding price comparison web sites. It maybe immoral but it’s more entertaining and much shorter.
