The Parole Officer
**1/2
Cinema
Releases - August 10, 2001
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12. 93
minutes. Directed by John Duigan Written by Steve Coogan, Henry Normal. Starring
Steve Coogan, Lena Headey, Om Puri, Steven Waddington, Ben Miller, Emma Williams,
Jenny Agutter.
The television programme "I'm Alan Partridge" proved
Steve Coogan can be funny. Very funny. The show featured Coogan as a disc
jockey so clueless that he thought "Sunday Bloody Sunday" was about boring
Sunday mornings and a comment like "You sound just like the girl from 'The
Exorcist'!" could be offered as a compliment. Partridge was charmless, tactless
and clumsy. All his jokes fell on deaf ears. When he moved into a hotel,
the staff didn't pretend to like him even though he was their only guest
and they needed his business to survive.
Despite the brilliance of "Alan Partridge", the
prospect of "The Parole Officer" did not excite me. It is Coogan's
first attempt to carry a feature film, and the pre-release publicity has
had the same aura as that of "High Heels and Low Lifes" and "Maybe Baby".
The advance clips all ring of bland Arts Council production. The stars appear
on cheesy chat shows, unconvincingly declaring their enthusiasm about the
project. The trailers are unfunny and the classiest publications the poster
can find quotes from are the Daily Star and Total Film.
The big surprise is that "The Parole Officer"
is not all that bad. It's watchable. There are some lame set pieces, such
as when Coogan vomits on a rollercoaster and the puke flies onto everyone
behind him, or when he fights off bad guys using office furniture -- but
in general the picture stays free from embarrassments and is mildly amusing.
Coogan does his Alan Partridge shtick without the benefit of being accompanied
by a laughter track, and manages to raise smiles more often than he lets
the movie stop dead.
Coogan plays Simon Gardner, an unlikeable Manchester
parole officer who finds himself framed for murder after he witnesses a corrupt
cop killing a business partner. He goes on the run, and enlists four former
clients (Om Puri, Steven Waddington, Ben Miller, Emma Williams) to help him
rob a bank vault to find a security tape that will prove his
innocence.
This is basically a standard heist comedy, which
I suppose is a little better than the dire Britflick I expected it to be.
It is well made, flows smoothly, and benefits greatly from what George W.
Bush called "the soft bigotry of lowered expectations" -- a phenomenon which
allows us to be impressed by something simply because it's not as bad as
we thought it might be, and from which Bush himself can no doubt do nothing
but gain.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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