Reviews

The more they stay the same. This is an entertaining film if you're fine with the dubious morality of 'the upper class' . Everyone but the thickie policeman and barman are ex Oxbridge and forgive each other the most heinous crimes -- kidnapping and the theft of priceless jewellery because turning them over to the police wight cause a scene. The production is full of inept hotel residents drafted in at the last moment when there are clearly two dozen professional actors in all the minor roles.

Wooing 101: Grab the girl, ignore her cries of 'no, no' and force kisses on her. Seconds later she'll be in love with you and won't press charges. Is this where Donnie Trump got his technique from?

Gee. If I hadn't been with my partner I'd have walked out after half an hour. Only afterwards did I discover he felt the same way. We could have gone home and been more scared by an obscure movie on the horror channel.

We knew we were in for a bad film when all the tropes started being thrown in. Seventies style breath music? check. Puritans? check. Instant farming? check. "Don't go into the woods"? check. Paedophilia? Check.

Honestly, the trailer has all the best bits of the film in one minute. Watch the trailer. The trailer is fabulous. Unfortunately, it doesn't have much relevance to the film. The 'horror' the trailer implies is never forthcoming, unless it's the terrible mash-up of olde-engishe and modern contractions. And utter cleanliness on a 17th century farm.

Endorsed by the Satanic Temple? What a bunch of losers.

I really wanted to like this film. It took me months to track down but I finally got it from Amazon (It was 'out of stock' for months). I wish I hadn't. As a practitioner of BJJ I was hoping for some inspirational rolling but the BJJ was only a small part of the film. Neither documentary nor fiction, it teeters across the line of both and achieves the benefits of neither. There are long periods of nothing at all (watching Candy walk along the street, for example). Larry himself is outstanding, the other characters less so, and when Danny talks about the philosophy of Jiu-jitsu, it jars with his drug-taking, alcoholic binges. The police detective was obnoxious.

A real shame.

Continuity error - Larry and Darren are rolling with Larry wearing his blue belt long before he was awarded it.

This film will never win any prizes but it was fun to watch and the plot advanced fairly quickly. Some jokes, some slapstick -- and a completely failed urine-in-a-beer-can set up that had no pay-off. Would it have been so hard to have someone drink it? The film is ramped from a 5 to a 7 by the superb performance of Richard Ayoade, who I honestly think could make the word 'hello' hilarious. While pretty much everything about the film is predictable, even to the point of the recycling of several catchphrases from other films (and I think 'the wife' was underutilised -- she could have made a brilliant Ripley-esque character), It was fast-enough and witty enough to make it worthwhile.