Belated cinema adventure for Tate’s sketch-show character and her grandson Matthew Horne is depressingly terrible
There are some British films which are basically the convenience-store sandwich of big-screen entertainment. Cinema’s equivalent of the 24-hour-garage tuna mayo pitta bread. And that, sadly, is the case with The Nan Movie, a truly horrendous and depressing film about Catherine Tate’s sweary old-lady character from her sketch show, in a storyline stretched out to a brutal hour and a half.
It arrives in UK cinemas with no fanfare and an uneasy lack of clarity about who the director is supposed to be. Some official listings give it as former Donmar Warehouse artistic director Josie Rourke and some say Tate herself, but there’s nothing on the closing credits, other than to say that both are producers. Was this how British audiences felt when they stumbled out of the cinema having watched...
There are some British films which are basically the convenience-store sandwich of big-screen entertainment. Cinema’s equivalent of the 24-hour-garage tuna mayo pitta bread. And that, sadly, is the case with The Nan Movie, a truly horrendous and depressing film about Catherine Tate’s sweary old-lady character from her sketch show, in a storyline stretched out to a brutal hour and a half.
It arrives in UK cinemas with no fanfare and an uneasy lack of clarity about who the director is supposed to be. Some official listings give it as former Donmar Warehouse artistic director Josie Rourke and some say Tate herself, but there’s nothing on the closing credits, other than to say that both are producers. Was this how British audiences felt when they stumbled out of the cinema having watched...
- 3/18/2022
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Armando Iannucci interview: 'We didn't want Alpha Papa to be the equivalent of Holiday on the Buses'
The Alan Partridge writer on turning 50, 'Alanistas' and why Peter Capaldi will make a great Doctor Who
You turned 50 recently. How did you celebrate?
I went to the cinema in the middle of the day to see the new Woody Allen film, Blue Jasmine. As a special treat, my wife and I went to the cinema to sit among an audience of unemployed men and pensioners. And there was I, somewhere in the middle. Straddling both. My 50s feel Ok so far. Middle age has always been my natural age anyway.
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa was a huge hit this year, both critically and at the box office. Was that a relief?
We genuinely didn't know what to expect so the reaction was very refreshing. There's an Alan Partridge fanbase, obviously. There's still a collective out there of Alan aficionados. Afic-alan-ados. Alan-istas. But you don't know how much of that...
You turned 50 recently. How did you celebrate?
I went to the cinema in the middle of the day to see the new Woody Allen film, Blue Jasmine. As a special treat, my wife and I went to the cinema to sit among an audience of unemployed men and pensioners. And there was I, somewhere in the middle. Straddling both. My 50s feel Ok so far. Middle age has always been my natural age anyway.
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa was a huge hit this year, both critically and at the box office. Was that a relief?
We genuinely didn't know what to expect so the reaction was very refreshing. There's an Alan Partridge fanbase, obviously. There's still a collective out there of Alan aficionados. Afic-alan-ados. Alan-istas. But you don't know how much of that...
- 12/22/2013
- by Michael Hogan
- The Guardian - Film News
Co-writer of TV sitcoms On the Buses and The Rag Trade
At the height of his writing partnership with Ronald Chesney, Ronald Wolfe, who has died aged 89 after a fall, enjoyed huge success with the sitcom On the Buses; its bawdy humour was panned by the critics but lapped up by the viewing public. Originally turned down by the BBC, the idea for a comedy based around the antics of a driver and conductor giving their inspector the runaround at the Luxton Bus Company appealed to Frank Muir, head of entertainment at the newly launched ITV company London Weekend Television.
Reg Varney played Stan Butler, at the wheel of the No 11, and Bob Grant was his lothario conductor, Jack. The pair made life hell for the miserable Inspector Blake (Stephen Lewis). Blakey's "Get that bus out" and "I 'ate you, Butler" were two of the most frequent lines that flowed...
At the height of his writing partnership with Ronald Chesney, Ronald Wolfe, who has died aged 89 after a fall, enjoyed huge success with the sitcom On the Buses; its bawdy humour was panned by the critics but lapped up by the viewing public. Originally turned down by the BBC, the idea for a comedy based around the antics of a driver and conductor giving their inspector the runaround at the Luxton Bus Company appealed to Frank Muir, head of entertainment at the newly launched ITV company London Weekend Television.
Reg Varney played Stan Butler, at the wheel of the No 11, and Bob Grant was his lothario conductor, Jack. The pair made life hell for the miserable Inspector Blake (Stephen Lewis). Blakey's "Get that bus out" and "I 'ate you, Butler" were two of the most frequent lines that flowed...
- 12/20/2011
- by Anthony Hayward
- The Guardian - Film News
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