ALL MY FRIENDS HATE ME
Cert 15 ★★★★ In cinemas now
He may be paranoid but that doesn’t mean all his friends aren’t out to get him.
That’s the premise of this pitch-black British comedy from director Andrew Gaynord and writers Tom Stourton and Tom Palmer. The set-up is pure Richard Curtis. Plummy Pete (Stourton) arrives in Devon to celebrate his birthday with his uni chums in the stately home of his old best pal George (Joshua McGuire).
They are all terribly posh and Pete thinks he may have outgrown them.
Since he last saw them “years ago”, he’s been trying to put his wild days behind him. He’s just got back from volunteering in a refugee camp and has a new down-to-earth girlfriend called Sonia (Charly Clive) whose soft, northern accent offers some relief from all the braying.
As she has a proper job, she’ll only join them on the second day of the celebrations. Until then, he’ll have to get along with George and his wife Fig (Georgina Campbell), coke-addled, hapless entrepreneur Archie (Graham Dickson), and Pete’s suicidal ex, Claire (Antonia Clarke).
A tradition (which the reformed Pete now remembers finding “demeaning”) dictates that the gang brings a “random” outsider. This time, the slot is filled by Harry (Dustin Demri-Burns), a “local” they found in the village pub.
Harry makes what sound like veiled digs at Pete from the off and keeps scribbling in a notepad. And why do his friends find Harry so hilarious? Suspicion begins to take root. Is this an elaborate prank? Does everybody secretly hate him?
Sharp lines are delivered with perfect timing. The writers met at Eton and their takedown of the upper classes feels like an inside job. This comedy also has the creeping menace of a horror film and the jokes are precision engineered to produce blood-curdling cringes.