People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan review – Kurupt FM crew go global
Despite having gone off the air in 2018, the BBC mockumentary series People Just Do Nothing, centred on the defiantly clueless crew of a west London pirate radio station, has continued to grow a cult audience. So a movie spinoff is well-deserved and much anticipated, even if, like its smalltime protagonists, it is hardly destined for mass appeal.
The excuse for the overseas jaunt is that one of Kurupt FM’s old-school garage tracks is being used on a Japanese TV game show. So the crew reassemble and fly off to Tokyo: MC Grindah (Allan Mustafa), his loyal sidekick DJ Beats (Hugo Chegwin), their perpetually wasted mate Steves (Steve
Stamp) and hanger-on Decoy (Daniel Sylvester Woolford), who literally does nothing for the whole film. In tow is their wheeler-dealer “manager” Chabuddy G (Asim Chaudhry), though they somehow neglect to buy a ticket for Grindah’s partner Miche (Lily Brazier). This is very much a boys’ outing, but Miche finds a way.
Much of the show’s comedy derived from the glaring contrast between the crew’s bravado and their woefully limited skills – intellectual, social, musical. So it proves again. Grindah’s freestyle “ragga rap” leaves Japanese music execs utterly bewildered; they’re thinking more of restyling the Brits as a boyband with matching outfits, dance moves and a new name: Bang Boys. (“Sounds like a paedophile ring,” Steves points out.) Smooth corporate type Taka (Ken Yamamura) edges Chabuddy out out of the picture, and familiar divisions open up over selling out or keeping it real.
The result is an amiable if unambitious showbiz satire, somewhere between The Office and Spinal Tap although not as groundbreaking as either. The gags are amusing rather than hilarious, it must be said, though the inevitable culture-clash comedy isn’t laid on too thickly and is mostly at the Brits’ expense. (They politely take off their shoes wherever they go, for example, even when it isn’t necessary.)
What really redeems the film are the brilliantly observed characters: these are archetypes of modern Britain that nobody really nailed before. Created by the principal actors themselves, they are generally portrayed with affection rather than condescension, and performed so convincingly that a newcomer might well believe they were real people. Uprooted from their London context, though, some of the specificity and satirical bite is lost. They don’t travel particularly well; but that’s kind of the point.
• People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan is released on 18 August in cinemas.