The problem with Magicians, the movie in which David Mitchell and Robert Webb make their attempt to transfer from TV to big screen success (and like so many British comedy duos, fail to do so) is that it feels like no more than an over-glorified sketch from their TV show.
That in itself isn't necessarily a criticism - it rolls amiably along, with sufficient in the way of plot and subplot interest to hold the interest - but the scale of its ambition seems to fall short somehow. Films don't have to be big to work as cinema movies, but they do have to have an awareness that the medium isn't quite the same. Here, Mitchell and Webb play more or less exactly the same characters they play in Peepshow and, more to the point, one is aware that they are "TV acting" from the very start.
But the story is OK, with uncertainty as to whether the beheading which starts the film is accidental or deliberate until the very end, and there are some pleasing supporting characters (Karl's manager, Jessica Hynes(Stephenson)'s glamorous assistant and Andrea Riseborough's office girl are all people whose company I enjoyed.
All in all, a failure in its attempt to transfer Mitchell and Webb to cinema (in which they are, at least, in good company), but a noble failure which is not without merit.
That in itself isn't necessarily a criticism - it rolls amiably along, with sufficient in the way of plot and subplot interest to hold the interest - but the scale of its ambition seems to fall short somehow. Films don't have to be big to work as cinema movies, but they do have to have an awareness that the medium isn't quite the same. Here, Mitchell and Webb play more or less exactly the same characters they play in Peepshow and, more to the point, one is aware that they are "TV acting" from the very start.
But the story is OK, with uncertainty as to whether the beheading which starts the film is accidental or deliberate until the very end, and there are some pleasing supporting characters (Karl's manager, Jessica Hynes(Stephenson)'s glamorous assistant and Andrea Riseborough's office girl are all people whose company I enjoyed.
All in all, a failure in its attempt to transfer Mitchell and Webb to cinema (in which they are, at least, in good company), but a noble failure which is not without merit.