I had doubts, dahlings, but you’re still Ab Fabulous to me
Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (15)
Verdict: Celebs galore, but Edina and Patsy outshine them all
RARELY have the women of comedy sailed such a flagship: in this romping, gorgeously self-parodying film Jennifer Saunders has assembled around her almost a matriarchal dynasty. here’s June Whitfield, radio comedy icon of my distant childhood when she was Eth in Take It From here: her timing is sharp as ever at 90. here’s a septuagenarian Marcia Warren and a glimpse of Joan Collins; naturally we have the modern comedy troupers, Celia Imrie and Kathy Burke and Jane horrocks.
But then comes the youngest: 15-yearold Indeyarna Donaldson-holness as Saffy’s rebel daughter Lola, recruited to mayhem by the misbehaving, accidentprone old lags Edina and Patsy.
Who are, of course, both on top form: Joanna Lumley gleefully distorting her perfect features into that magical sneering pout, Patsy’s trademark look which, she once explained to me, she draws from remembering ‘that expression you’re always being told, at school, to take off your face’.
Feature films based on beloved sitcoms are famously risky. For every one that works (like Alpha Papa) there are half-adozen (like Sex And The City) so dire they almost spoil the joyful memories.
So it was understandable, but felt a bit ominous, when we learned that Saunders would make this into a virtual red carpet, so dense with famous faces that it constitutes a sort of insurance.
Even with a thin story it would be a pleasurably shrieky face-spotting exercise. And the star-studding is appropriate since our heroines live (or wish they did) at the heart of the international jet-set.
Could be tricky, though, to pack into 80 minutes 60 celebrity cameos from Kim Kardashian to Jeremy Paxman; but they get rid of a dozen or so in a London Fashion Week catwalk sequence and dispose briskly of more in dream sequences when Edina fantasises about reviving her PR career and Patsy about life as a Cannes chick.
Fast-paced direction by Mandie Fletcher whips through the rest of the celebs at a dizzying rate, with squeaks and gasps of recognition from the audience. There’s Orla Guerin (as herself, reporting) and Rebel Wilson as a foulmouthed air stewardess on the pair’s first ever cheap flight: ‘No first class, it’s first a*s on the seat.’
Mark Gatiss is a haughty publisher at Random Penguin turning down Eddy’s autobiography: ‘Your life may be worth living but it’s not worth reading.’
Lulu leaps from a massage table with vertical hair like Tintin.
And there’s the big splash moment from the trailer: Kate Moss, rather brilliantly deadpan, is thrown into the Thames, fag and glass in hand, to spark a Thelmaand-Louise plot as the central pair escape from the police.
As for the 90 drag queens — another startling boast in the publicity — they are confined to one completely unexpected, and rather lovely, scene with Julia Sawalha’s Saffy.
So the star-spotting is continuous silly fun; but the point is that what we all really wanted, and richly receive, was the old core team: Patsy and Edina 20 years on, defiantly overdressed, stubbing out fags in oysters and struggling to come to terms with twerking, Tinder, onesies, mindfulness and being ‘trolleyed on Twitter’.
Defying time they strut, pose, bicker, booze and scrabble to claw their way just one or two letters higher in the alphabet of celebrity.
We wanted to see whether Saffy’s boot-faced disapproval is intact (oh yes it is!), and to connect again with the old gang.
A magnificently savage Kathy Burke is still the magazine editor (‘SamCam? Dunno who...’) and Christopher Ryan is Edina’s downtrodden ex, Marshall Turtle, now ‘identifying’ as gender-fluid in one of the many sharp, up-to-date references to the baffling modern world which the ageing pair now grapple with. (‘Bubble, did you feed my Twitter?’ ‘Nooo. I forgot, and it died.’)
The old mob deliver, and that’s where the real joy is; the spare celebs are just sprinkles on a good solid cake.
Our frayed heroines have found their credit cards ‘broken’ and struggle for what a puzzled Patsy calls ‘hand money’ to keep up their lifestyle.
ThE JOY of Saunders and Lumley is that though they scrub up beautifully they are utterly fearless about looking old, raddled, hungover and embarrassingly desperate, Lumley stabbing random DIY Botox into her face and sleeping on the lavatory, Edina with lipstick up her nose.
Undaunted, they flee to the Riviera hoping to use Patsy as man-bait for some rich old lover. She does the crumpled-cougar to perfection, especially in a memorable moment of ‘reconnecting’ with John hamm. he covers his face in naked shock with a quavering: ‘I was 15! Go away! You took my virginity, leave me my sanity.’
Jokes spring out sharp and fresh and silly and pleasingly tasteless. It sends up both celebrity culture and cinema itself with artful parodies: a short-lived ‘American moment’ when Edina repents her selfish life as she sinks below the waves (a lot of excellent water jokes). The closing sequence even makes a pretty tribute to Some Like It hot.
Far sharper than the late TV specials, it rips along joyfully; better than it has any right to be. The girls have still got it, oh yeah. Bring on the Bolly!
A VERSION of this review appeared in earlier editions.
BRIAN VINER IS AWAY