Fackham Hall – Dir: Jim O’Hanlon (13th Floor Film Review)
Like him or loathe him — and he is certainly that polarising — there is no escaping the fact that Jimmy Carr is something of a cultural phenomenon. And given the popularity of that other cultural phenomenon, Downton Abbey, one might reasonably hope that a marriage of stately period drama and deeply silly comedy would result in… something better than this…
Starring Thomasin McKenzie, Ben Radcliffe, Katherine Waterston, Emma Laird, Tom Goodman-Hill, Anna Maxwell Martin, Sue Johnston, Tom Felton and Damian Lewis.
The story unfolds thusly.
Lord Davenport, the patriarch of Fackham Hall, is played by a slightly bemused Damian Lewis, who looks as though he absent-mindedly wandered through the wrong door onto the set of Downton Abbey, decided to stay, and gamely throws himself — comedy moustache and all — into the mayhem.
His Lordship and Lady Prudence (Katherine Waterston) are in danger of losing their stately pile following the premature expiration of all four of their sons. Left with only their two daughters — Poppy (Emma Laird) and Rose (Leave No Trace’s Thomasin McKenzie) — their best hope is to marry youngest daughter Poppy off to the man set to inherit the estate upon Lord D’s death.
Or, as Lady Prudence charmingly puts it, “I’m just delighted that after so many years of courting, she’s finally found the right cousin.”
Marrying off Rose instead is out of the question as, at the geriatric age of 23, she is considered a “dried-up husk of a woman” — writing credit to Leo DiCaprio, perhaps?
The cousin in question is the swamy Archibald, (Tom Felton, channeling Draco Malfoy levels of loathsome smugness).
Meanwhile, on the other side of the tracks, adult orphan pickpocket (I know, but I have a lot of exposition to cram into one sentence, so do bear with me) Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) is tasked with delivering a mysterious letter to — of all astonishing and completely unforeseeable places — Fackham Hall.
From here on, the mostly “Dad” jokes come thick and fast — which is just as well, because they hit and miss in equal measure. Not giving the audience time to catch its breath between gags is, strategically speaking, wise.
Think classic Abrahams/Zucker brothers (Airplane!, Top Secret!) or Mel Brooks (Robin Hood: Men in Tights) — only not quite as clever and with significantly more fart jokes.
In the interests of transparency, the film rather lost me early on by pilfering one of the sharpest jokes from Four Weddings and a Funeral and somehow managing to turn it into a comedic butter knife.
To give credit where it’s due, Fackham Hall does possess a surprisingly solid narrative foundation and two appealing lovebirds in McKenzie and Radcliffe.
It also boasts a strong supporting cast, including Line of Duty’s Anna Maxwell Martin, who merrily chews her way through acres of scenery as a dour Scottish housekeeper who may be — shock, horror — harbouring scandalous secrets of her own.
It is almost worth the price of admission to watch a double BAFTA-winning actress deliver Airplane!-worthy lines such as, “After which you must clear the plates from the table. The table is an item of furniture with a flat top and four legs,” without so much as a twitch.
Tom Goodman-Hill (Baby Reindeer), as Detective Watt, gamely does his best, but he is given some decidedly substandard material. He falls foul early on of a badly executed “Who’s on First?”-style gag that runs far too long, and he deserves better than to be the (ahem) butt of most of the fart jokes.
There is a clever set piece involving an accidental double shooting, and an utterly ridiculous yet genuinely funny “murder” scene that knows exactly when to quit while it’s ahead.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Carr’s laboured cameo as a punctuation-challenged priest — yet another Four Weddings callback. The gag hinges entirely on his inability to locate a comma, pause or full stop, rendering his sermons a breathless avalanche of syntactic mayhem. It’s amusing the first time. By the third missing comma, you begin silently willing him towards a full stop.
We get it, Jimmy. Punctuation matters. It’s the small but vital difference between dining with Grandma and dining on her.
Now let’s eat, Grandma.
Jo Barry
Fackham Hall opens in NZ cinemas February 19th. Click here for tickets and showtimes.
