Review of Eat the Rich

I've waited over ten years since hearing about this film to get around to finally watching it. I grew up as a fan of Bottom and The Young Ones and the occasional Comic Strip Presents, then dived headlong into The Dangerous Brothers, Kevin Turvey and then the complete Comic Strip box set, so I had high hopes despite the tepid reviews for Eat the Rich. It was God-awful. What was presumably devised as a satire of Thatcherite Britiain could almost have been a satire of 80s alternative comedy, it was that reliant on lazy tropes and shots at easy targets. It was as if written by schoolboys. None of the characters are fleshed out enough to be anything more than stereotypes of the sorts of characters that litter the Comic Strip - which isn't such a bad thing for the generic yuppies, but the lead protagonists had nothing going for them. The plot was flimsy and fumbled with very strange pacing and the whole thing felt like it was going nowhere. For reasons unknown most of the Comic Strip regulars only appear in fleeting cameos, and whilst fun to see, make little impact having no real material to work with. None of the leads are well known for being comic actors, and handled their roles pretty poorly, unable to wring any laughs from the weak script.

It felt like the writers came up with the idea of yuppies eating themselves (again, not a particularly innovative allegory for the 80s, since we saw it in 'The Cook, the Thief...' and the cannibalism angle also in 'Consuming Passions') and then put the absolute minimum effort into crafting a plot around that conceit. To cap it off the whole thing looked dirt cheap.

It gets 2 stars for the enjoyable array of cameos and the Motorhead soundtrack.

Do yourself a favour and watch some of Peter Richardson's better Comic Strip films. There's a reason this has languished in obscurity for so long...