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DokBrowne [ 8.0 ]
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You don't have to be a "Downton Abbey" fan (never seen an episode myself) or remember every set prop from "Gosford Park" 24 years ago to relish this 2025-released straight-up spoof of that exact manner of British-estate costume drama. It's possible I overlooked a couple references but the movie is pretty much entirely accessible to anyone, that is anyone fond of wordplay (including a whole "who's on first"-style bit), absurdism, anachronisms, exaggerated satire of obsolete social customs, sight gags, cleverly arranged slapstick, literary references, naughty double entendres tucked into polite subject matter, background madness while characters obliviously exposit in the fore, basically all the types of humor that used to populate ZAZ fare ("Naked Gun", "Airplane", "Hot Shots") and the Mel Brooks canon.
It's back! Granted it was already back a few months ago when the "Naked Gun" remakequel hit theaters but here's another one also getting an inexplicable wide release on the big screen within the same year and it's even better imo, due to a higher volume of comedy (no dead space in-between like what plagued parts of Akiva Schaffer's "The Naked Gun", I mean even that movie's title whiffed it by declining to add a joke or spin, whereas "Fackham Hall"'s is a great one that's going to endure) and a topic ripe for parody that hasn't already been done several times in other movies (here and there on TV yes but not in this format).
In the fine tradition of some of the best lampoons, this also manages to re-create the vibe and feeling and aesthetic of what it's spoofing in such a way that it can be enjoyed on those terms even around the wackiness. Fackham Hall is a lovely manor both inside and out and the cast is primped and calibrated just right. Large credit goes to stand-up comedian Jimmy Carr who has story credit, is one of the screenwriters and shows up as a priest with pronunciation mix-ups (the way his British accent says "our souls" sounds like "assholes", for instance), so maybe I'm a touch biased since I love his specials, but he's a genuinely witty and observant comic mind, and c'mon anyone who's ever liked an old-school spoof from the '70s, '80s and '90s will recognize "Fackham Hall"'s precise, spirited rejuvenation of that lost art. And even if one could argue the movie never rises to more than a consistent chuckle, well, being stiff-upper-lipped goes hand in hand with this material too!
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| Weighted Rating | : 6.9 |
| No. Ratings | : 1 | |
| No. Reviews | : 1 | |
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