THIS darkly funny and quietly brilliant British drama is funny in both senses of the word.
Actor-turned-screenwriter Tony Pitts has an eye for the ridiculous and an ear for the well-honed gag.
But his wildly ambitious script is also “funny peculiar”.
A brilliant Maxine Peake plays Funny Cow (we only know her stage name), a brassy Yorkshirewoman who escapes poverty and domestic violence by gatecrashing the male dominated stand-up circuit of the 1970s.
On paper, this sounds like another uplifting, Northern, rags-to-riches tale.
But we never get a feeling the fame with solve her problems. To her, comedy is just something she does. Fulfilment, you suspect, is for Southern softies.
As a child (a deceptively sweet Macy Shackleton) we see her develop a line in anarchic humour as she wisecracks her dad after a brutal beating. In the 1970s, she leaves her short-tempered husband (played menacingly by screenwriter Pitts) for Paddy Considine’s hilariously pretentious bookshop owner.
He doesn’t quite cut it either. It’s only when she comes across Alun Armstrong’s club comedian that she begins to sense her destiny. With timing like his, you can hardly blame her.
We see Armstrong dying magnificently on stage (“give the poor b*****d a chance” pleads the late Bobby Knutt’s compere), despite resuscitating some gloriously pungent old jokes.
The note-perfect recreation of Northern working men’s clubs also allows for a funny Vic Reeves cameo and a soulful duet from Corinne Bailey Rae and Richard Hawley, who also provides the film’s beautiful soundtrack.
Some laughs are more uncomfortable than others. Pitts, a typi- cally awkward Yorkshireman, refuses to sugarcoat the racism and homophobia of the period.
The jokes that make Funny Cow a star in the 1970s would land her in court in 2018, but Peake’s brutally honest performance keeps us onside.
Funny Cow really is a class act – fiercely performed, smartly written, and wonderfully scored.
But it’s the bitter tang of authenticity that stays with you. (-) (1) (2) (3) (-) (7) (4) (5) (6) (10) (-) RAMPAGE (1) A QUIET PLACE (-) TRUTH OR DARE (2) READY PLAYER ONE (3) BLOCKERS (4) BLACK PANTHER (10) ISLE OF DOGS (6) I CAN ONLY IMAGINE (5) TYLER PERRY’S ACRIMONY (7) CHAPPAQUIDDICK HELEN Mirren and Donald Sutherland fire up a rusty mobile home and head off on a road trip.
But she has terminal cancer and he has dementia. The pair head off to £4.1m £2.0m £1.9m £1.1m £931k £623k £623k £502k £452k £357k $35.7m $32.9m $18.6m $11.5m $10.7m $5.7m $5.4m $4.1m $3.6m $3.0m the home of Ernest Hemingway in Key West.
On the way, they tangle with hoodlums, gatecrash a wedding and get caught up in a Donald Trump rally.
Sutherland and Mirren spark nicely, but most of the jokes fall flat