Kevin & Perry Go Large 1/2
Rated on a 4-star scale Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre) Released in the UK by Icon on 21 April, 2000; certificate 15; 83 minutes; country of origin UK/USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Ed Bye; produced by Harry Enfield, Peter Bennett-Jones, Jolyon Symonds. Written by David Cummings, Harry Enfield. Photographed by Alan Almond; edited by Mark Wybourn.
CAST..... Harry Enfield..... Kevin Kathy Burke..... Perry Rhys Ifans..... Eye Ball Paul Laura Fraser..... Candice Tabitha Wady ..... Gemma James Fleet..... Dad Louise Rix..... Mum
What we have here is the worst possible way to adapt "Harry Enfield's Television Programme" for the big screen. "Kevin & Perry Go Large" simply takes the most tiresome and obnoxious routine to ever play on that comedy sketch show and spins it out to feature length. Enfield could have given us a better film by searching the video vaults of the British Broadcasting Corporation for anything he'd previously done, arranging it in any order and transferring the result straight to celluloid.
The title characters, played by Enfield and Kathy Burke, are two teenage slobs desperate to lose their virginity. Dialogue tells us they are fifteen or sixteen years old, but their actions are more suited to retarded infants, and it's hardly a surprise that the closest they've got to sex is buying a porn magazine from the local corner shop while getting red-faced and suppressing giggles. Whenever they see girls they leer, drool and make loud whimpering noises like dogs with rabies and bullet wounds.
As fans of computerised 'dance music', the pair decide they will take a summer vacation to Ibiza, where English clubs are big, and, according to Perry, "It'll be easy to get a shag!" Nobody would ever make love with these boys in real life -- their walk is a mixture of hobbling and jumping, they talk in gulps, groans and squeaks, and their wrong-size clothes are ugly and inside-out. But of course the film must end with some ladies jumping all over them, after an 83-minute journey of whatever lame sight gags the filmmakers come up with. You can predict every move of a film like this just by looking at the trailer.
According to Enfield, who co-wrote, it's a send-up of the teenage years. But if satire is the intention the method is too ham-handed and obvious. Kevin and Perry say things like "I'm a profound artist waiting to be discovered," and we're supposed to laugh just because they're so oblivious to their own stupidity. I find Enfield's own attitude funnier than that of his characters. He thinks he's given us a sharp comedic commentary, when he's really just created two annoying dopes and surrounded them with toilet humour. "Kevin & Perry Go Large" finds grand mirth in close-ups of acne, erections, gaping jaws and defecation. The film's most sophisticated running joke is that Kevin puts on an awkward James Bond voice whenever he is in female company. And what are we supposed to make of the fact that this is a professionally-made motion picture featuring an adult man and woman playing adolescent boys?
Teenage virginity is indeed embarrassing. I remember my own -- a period in which the only thing my friends and I ever thought about was getting laid. The constant chasing after girls, the silly 'foolproof' plans on how to woo them and the pathetic adherence to bad fashions in an attempt to impress them could all make a poignant, funny movie. I did not expect "Kevin & Perry Go Large" to be that movie, but that doesn't change its badness, or the fact that its budget could have been better spent.
The film does have one funny moment. It comes when Kevin's parents have agreed to let him and Perry go to Ibiza. The boys look down at the kitchen table, and are momentarily shocked by the huge logo on the plane tickets: Virgin Airlines.
COPYRIGHT(c) 2000 Ian Waldron-Mantgani Please visit, and encourage others to visit, the UK Critic's website, which is located at http://members.aol.com/ukcritic
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