Funniest film I've seen - intentionally or otherwise
When I sat down to watch this I was expecting something truly execrable that would just irritate me, whilst at very best providing occasional cheap chuckles. Instead I found myself weeping with laughter from start to finish, and admittedly a couple of bottles of champers down the line, watched it again a few hours later.If you are looking for an accurate film about William and Kate, you'll be sorely disappointed (unless you're very dim, in which case I suppose you might take it all as fact). Similarly if you want an intelligently-crafted romantic story, you'd find more of that watching Universal Soldier. However if you want to enjoy one of the daftest, most mystifyingly slap-dash, and yet somehow rather sweet and engaging films, this is just the ticket.
The acting veers towards the embarrassing (Kate, she of the fluctuating accent) and on to the eye-gougingly awful (Margaret, her bitchy rival for Will's affections), but most of the cast are probably more at the mercy of the script than their own lack of talent. Will is almost certainly nothing like the Prince in real life, but is a lovable if rather thick hero. Prince Charles is played quite capably, and special mention must go to some American chap called Richard Reid, who plays Derek, a fictitious Old Etonian pal of Will's, quite superbly - so perfect a depiction of a nonchalant, public-school layabout, that I actually thought I might know him! My only real complaint is Prince Harry, whose real-life personality should have been a gift to this film, but instead gets only 2 minutes on-screen, probably because the actor looks like a sickly little weed, and can barely mumble out his lines in some vile American drawl.
So there is just enough conventional merit that you can watch 10 minutes without wanting to put your foot through the telly and send Clarence House the bill. Now comes the fun part...
The catalogue of shockingly observed scenes and lines in this film has to be seen to be believed, but as I said before, they don't make you wince or feel frustrated, they're just bloody funny. From the shots of Oxford as a news-reader announces Will's decision to attend St Andrews to cringe-making, laddy student dialogue, from the unusually pathetic-looking shoot at Highgrove to the scenes as our favourite twosome finally get it on, it is an absolute hoot. A few silly giggles would not be enough, but there is this air of absolute daftness pervading every scene, which glues it all together. The characters are somehow likable despite the awfulness, even when it is Kate spouting drivel about the environment, or Charles, with Gandalf-like gravitas, proclaiming "So it begins!" while the couple first snog in front of the press. The plot just about holds together (you'd hope it would, being based on a true story), and yet there are moments of quite dumb-founding nonsense: Kate and her mother bemoaning the intrusion of the paparazzi while simultaneously discussing Kate and Will's relationship in front of said journalists; as for the will-they-won't-they bit near the end, words fail me. However, these are not complaints - this is comic gold, and if you're of a silly disposition as I am, you will be on the floor in hysterics for every idiotic, cliché-ridden minute of it. More than that, you will find yourself cheering them on at the end, even if you feel slightly sullied by the whole thing.
What I just cannot determine is what was and wasn't intended. I assume that it is just a beautiful accident that it is such a perfect blend of amusingly dire and yet quite sweet, but at times I almost wonder whether the bad bits are so bad that they were intended, the brilliant product of an in-joke between the writers and directors. This view would be hard to substantiate, but for my brother's observation that someone had bothered to make a sign for a nightclub in the film, reading "Boulanji" - an elision of Chelsea hot-spots Boujis and the erstwhile Mamilanji - perhaps a singular flash of wit, or perhaps the one clue that the rest is all one big joke as well.
Whatever the case, you'll have a lot of fun finding out for yourselves.
Good God, why on earth did I bother writing that.
score 10/10
charliemorrison 3 June 2011
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2437953/34788
Pages:
[1]