Kevin & Perry Go Large
1/2
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Icon on 21 April, 2000; certificate 15; 83 minutes;
country of origin UK/USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Ed Bye; produced by Harry
Enfield, Peter Bennett-Jones, Jolyon Symonds.
Written by David Cummings, Harry Enfield.
Photographed by Alan Almond; edited by Mark
Wybourn.
CAST.....
Harry Enfield..... Kevin
Kathy Burke..... Perry
Rhys Ifans..... Eye Ball Paul
Laura Fraser..... Candice
Tabitha Wady ..... Gemma
James Fleet..... Dad
Louise Rix..... Mum
What we have here is the worst possible way to
adapt "Harry Enfield's Television Programme" for the big screen. "Kevin
& Perry Go Large" simply takes the most tiresome and obnoxious
routine to ever play on that comedy sketch show and spins it out to feature
length. Enfield could have given us a better film by searching the video
vaults of the British Broadcasting Corporation for anything he'd previously
done, arranging it in any order and transferring the result straight to
celluloid.
The title characters, played by Enfield and Kathy
Burke, are two teenage slobs desperate to lose their virginity. Dialogue
tells us they are fifteen or sixteen years old, but their actions are more
suited to retarded infants, and it's hardly a surprise that the closest they've
got to sex is buying a porn magazine from the local corner shop while getting
red-faced and suppressing giggles. Whenever they see girls they leer, drool
and make loud whimpering noises like dogs with rabies and bullet
wounds.
As fans of computerised 'dance music', the pair
decide they will take a summer vacation to Ibiza, where English clubs are
big, and, according to Perry, "It'll be easy to get a shag!" Nobody would
ever make love with these boys in real life -- their walk is a mixture of
hobbling and jumping, they talk in gulps, groans and squeaks, and their
wrong-size clothes are ugly and inside-out. But of course the film must end
with some ladies jumping all over them, after an 83-minute journey of whatever
lame sight gags the filmmakers come up with. You can predict every move of
a film like this just by looking at the trailer.
According to Enfield, who co-wrote, it's a send-up
of the teenage years. But if satire is the intention the method is too ham-handed
and obvious. Kevin and Perry say things like "I'm a profound artist waiting
to be discovered," and we're supposed to laugh just because they're so oblivious
to their own stupidity. I find Enfield's own attitude funnier than that of
his characters. He thinks he's given us a sharp comedic commentary, when
he's really just created two annoying dopes and surrounded them with toilet
humour. "Kevin & Perry Go Large" finds grand mirth in close-ups of acne,
erections, gaping jaws and defecation. The film's most sophisticated running
joke is that Kevin puts on an awkward James Bond voice whenever he is in
female company. And what are we supposed to make of the fact that this is
a professionally-made motion picture featuring an adult man and woman playing
adolescent boys?
Teenage virginity is indeed embarrassing. I remember
my own -- a period in which the only thing my friends and I ever thought
about was getting laid. The constant chasing after girls, the silly 'foolproof'
plans on how to woo them and the pathetic adherence to bad fashions in an
attempt to impress them could all make a poignant, funny movie. I did not
expect "Kevin & Perry Go Large" to be that movie, but that doesn't change
its badness, or the fact that its budget could have been better
spent.
The film does have one funny moment. It comes
when Kevin's parents have agreed to let him and Perry go to Ibiza. The boys
look down at the kitchen table, and are momentarily shocked by the huge logo
on the plane tickets: Virgin Airlines.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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