By Dylan Jones
Rating: ***
The Absolutely Fabulous Movie is probably the most hotly-anticipated piece of cinema in the gay community since…maybe ever. We don’t need any context or background to this do we. You all know who Eddie and Patsy are. You’ve all quoted them a thousand times, and watched every episode a hundred times whilst hungover or worse. The characters, and the show, are comedy icons, and have formed an integral part of the modern gay man’s cultural lexicon.
Since its premiere on Thursday (that seemingly EVERYONE was invited to, including Kassandra Powell’s dog and TeTe Bang’s hair extensions), reception, both from critics and the public, has been…polarized. Its rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes is currently at a VERY healthy 84%. The Guardian gave it two stars, dubbing it “as painfully-stretched as a botched facelift”. Smiley Vyrus gave it 10/10 in one of her Facebook statuses. The Glory said on Twitter that it was “empowering”. The Evening Standard gave it three stars and said it was “amazing”, but that was on Friday morning so they were probably still drunk from the premiere.
Here’s our verdict: it’ll do. It is, by no means, a disaster of Sex & The City 2 proportions…despite the fact that the celebrity cameos are so frequent and seemingly random, that it almost seems like Jennifer Saunders just had a bitch through Heat Magazine with her eyes closed.
Jen also shows her age a little – there are some painfully obvious efforts to pull the characters into 2016, with shoed-in appearances from dating apps, selfie-sticks, and Delevingnes.
There are also some clumsily offensive moments. The anger at the “yellowface” portrayal however, was totally unfounded. Typical of attention-seeking victimhood culture, people dismissed the entire movie because of a totally incidental, completely inoffensive segment. And it was actually contextual – Jeanette Krankie made a couple of cameos in the original show as cultural caricatures, so it was just following on from that. Although, if I’d been working on the movie I might have whispered in Saunders’ ear “maybe just don’t do that and save yourself a bit of trouble.”
What was offensive however, were a couple of unnecessary and very clunky transgender jokes. But we must remember they were uttered by Eddie and Patsy, who are SUPPOSED to be politically incorrect monsters.
And that’s what saved the movie, of course. As always, Saunders and particularly Joanna Lumley, were utterly mesmerising, endearingly disgusting, stumbling around with the fabulous, unthinking abandon that, as gay men, we’ve all attempted to emulate since episode 1 aired in 1992 (CHRIST, 1992!).
The other special thing about it was the many affectionate throwbacks to iconic moments in the show. At Patsy’s first guttural utterance “Is he from Gabon?” a roar went up from the audience. There were some great original lines in it too; Some wonderful new insults are hurled at Saffy, and Patsy struggling to find the word for “cash” is priceless.
Ultimately, despite flaws, it manages to capture the essence of the show: Absurd, celebrity-obsessed, and a bit of a mess. And that’s what we love! That’s our LIVES! And that’s what we’ve always said about Ab Fab isn’t it…it’s US! SWEETIE!
