Cameo pile-up
Deborah Ross Hot Fuzz 15, Nationwide Iwish I could like this film more than I did, but I didn't, mostly because I don't think it adds up to anything more than a vastly bloated TV sketch. Maybe this is my failure. The chap next to me at the screening laughed with deeply annoying vigour throughout. Had I lost my sense of humour? Nope. I checked my pockets, and there it was. Had this been a TV sketch or perhaps a TV half-hour like The Comic Strip I might, too, have found it quite funny but 120 minutes for this kind of onejoke caper? Of course, it's not how long a film is that's important; it's how long it seems. And this seemed all that. Hell, yes.
Hot Fuzz is Simon Pegg's and Nick Frost's second feature and it has been most eagerly anticipated. Their first film, Shaun of the Dead, was the romzomcom that, in its goofy way, charmed even though it rather suffered from what this film suffers from, which is largely running out of steam quite early on and then limping gamely yet uninventively on. Also, it has one of those extremely drawn-out violent conclusions that forgets about the comedy altogether and goes on and on and on, finishes — hurrah! — but then starts up all over again. God, maybe I have lost my sense of humour. Nope, just checked my pockets again. It is definitely there.
The deal here is this: Simon Pegg is London super cop Sgt Nicholas Angel, who is very good at his job — so good, he's being shifted off to the chocolate-box, crime-free village of Sandford because his high arrest rate is embarrassing the rest of the department. In Sandford, Angel finds himself paired up with the bumbling, inept PC Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) and is forced to investigate hedge-clipping incidents and missing swans until a series of grisly 'accidents' in the village prompts him to investigate its 'dark secrets' and blah-de-blah.
Look, there are some nice gags and some nice jokes: 'You wanna be a big cop in a small town? F— off to the model village!' There are nods and winks to everything from The Wicker Man through to The Omen via spaghetti westerns. And as for the cameos, well. This film is effectively a cameo pile-up, a pile-up which includes Anne Reid, Timothy Dalton, Rafe Spall, Billie Whitelaw, David Threlfall, Edward Woodwood, Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan, Bill Bailey, Martin Freeman and even Elvis (that's the swan; hey, it's listed in the credits!). But this is kind of a problem, and possibly one that gets to the heart of what is wrong with this film: there is too much going on without any of it being developed or substantial or even comic enough to engage our attention and then hang on to it for that 120 minutes.
Although I imagine the starting point for this film was to create a parody of a buddy cop movie, it gets woefully distracted along the way. Does it really want to be a parody, or more of an action film? Does it really want to be a comedy, or more of a genuine murder mystery? (Although, I have to say, it's not much of a murder mystery. There's more intrigue in your average episode of Heartbeat.) Some of the jokes — like PC Doris Thatcher's (Olivia Colman) double entendres — are flogged to their very death and then flogged some more. Plus I don't think the direction helps to bring it all together. Edgar Wright directs it in such a whiplash, whooshing, over-amplified style that it's like being on a waltzer down the fair. I'm quite glad now that I wasn't sick, only bored.
I do admire Pegg's and Frost's inventiveness, but do wish they'd learn how to sustain it for the cinema. They could, too, pay more attention to character. Obviously, if you have 56 speaking parts in a film, as this does, you aren't going to get any rich, finely nuanced character studies but, still, it would have been good if at least one had moved beyond caricature. Yes, Sgt Angel is meant to be a bore, but does that mean he has to be such a bore to watch? (For best performance as a bore see Robert De Niro as Rupert Pupkin in Martin Scorsese's King of Comedy. Riveting.) Mainly, though, I just don't think the film is funny enough. Is it my failure? I can't discount it but will anyway. After all, I've nothing to lose apart from my sense of humour, if I haven't lost it already. Nope. Just checked. Still there.
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