Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Honest was largely part of this episode as the representative sample of the musician’s vanity project, perhaps now the ur-example and a two-fer, as it’s directed and part-written by Eurythmics dood Dave Stewart and star three quarters of turn of the millennium Spice Girl alternatives All Saints, namely Melanie Blatt, Nicole Appleton, and Natalie Appleton, with Shaznay Lewis wisely passing on this “opportunity”. Perhaps she’s the only one that read the script before deciding.
This film, it says here and despite all evidence to the contrary, is a black comedy set in underworld of 60s Laaahn Daaaahn, and comes across like someone threw a rejected Guy Ritchie script and a unironic version of Austin Powers into a blender, then carefully removed all charm, drama, humour, and charisma leaving this long-forgotten husk we have unwisely chosen to resurrect. As such let’s not spend too much time on it.
The Appletons and Blatt play the thieving Chase sisters, robbing high value targets while disguised as men, and further disguised by wearing a mask. Belt and braces, I assume, not that it helps when the local kingpin, Corin Redgrave’s Duggie Ord, figures out they are behind the crimes, including one of Ord’s own gaffs. So he demands monetary compensation, or their lives, so the sisters hatch a plan to steal the stash of toff magazine editor and drug dealer Jonathan Cake’s Andrew Pryce-Stevens. This is complicated somewhat by one of the sisters, and I’m not ashamed to say I can’t remember which of them, developing a relationship with one of the magazine’s writers, Peter Facinelli’s Daniel Wheaton, on a gap year from an American law school. Comic caper hi-jinks fail to ensue.
That brief summation saves you from a fair amount of what’s best characterised as filler, particularly the “help, we’re accidentally on acid” sequence that lasts for approximately fifteen years, and also from a raft of performances that I suppose are technically acting in the strict meaning of the sense, but only very barely.
It’s primary crime is, of course, that it’s a comedy that is not funny in the slightest, despite the main writers of the film having a long and successful track record. It’s fair to say, I think, that this wasn’t their finest hour and a half, even before its mangled by some absolute honking delivery from our leads. The characterisation also falls completely flat, so the dramatic elements follow the comedic out of the window, leaving this film very little to offer. Unless, that is, you want to watch a film so male gaze-y that it’s more of a male leer.
Now, this was decried as “the worst British film ever made” on release, and I think there was more than an element of tabloid sensationalism and their typical desire to tear down successful people, women particularly, at the slightest excuse. Much the same happened a few years later with Sex Lives of the Potato Men, and to be clear both are execrable films and not worth your time or consideration, but worst ever? Only if you’ve seen a very limited selection of films.
It is really bad, though.