Why so much hype?

recommended

Excellent but underrated film

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

i really like rick mayall, drop dead Fred was great and when he's not doing his bottom and young ones style he can be charming/sly and a surprisingly good straight actor.....so all this is just me setting up an apology to him.rick 'im sorry'... this film suffers from the worst failing a film can have. it is so crushingly slow moving....no, sorry. its just plain boring. funny moments are negated by the whole thing being so drawn out. it has appalling pacing.There is also a weirdly misplaced 'accidental' outing that is just plain not funny, succeeds in just padding the film out. padding it really doesn't need. its fitting that in a film that deals with murder, the viewer is constantly losing the will to live.

Rik Mayall won my sense of humor in the wonderful 80s Britcom, "The Young Ones", which I highly recommend to the uninitiated. Jane Horrocks is extremely talented and does a great job. Danny Aiello plays a wonderfully smart and silly Mafia don. The film is silly. But, I still think silly is funny, when it is done with some intelligence. The best part of this film for me was the sprinkling of fabulously absurd character roles throughout the story. Aiello's bodyguards, the puerile hit man, the insecure security supervisor. All very clever. Ronald Pickup as Mayall's competition is also very funny. If you like the slappy end of Brit comedy, I think this film will satisfy you quite nicely.

I, too, fail to understand why this flick has been trashed so completely. There seems to be an ever-increasing trend toward eschewing black humor because it 'isn't nice'. Well, so what! this movie is VERY dark and in several places absolutely hilarious. I admit that I did not know who Rik Mayall is, but I'll be looking for him in the future. Jane Horrocks is every bit as good as she was in "Little Voice", and the guy who played the contract killer is hysterical. Please don't pay any attention to the nay-sayers and catch this movie if you can.

I think this film is very funny and highly underrated.You have to have seen Rick Mayall in the New Statesman to understand how well he can play a shifty businessman. Jane Horrocks performs very well (Particularly when you realise she does her own singing) and for me seemed very believable. Whilst some of the side plot lines may seem tenuous and dare I say it even a little dry, the whole piece spirals toward the climax of both the tour and the movie with Rick Mayall 's character bouncing in an emotional maelstrom between love and hate. (One of the smaller scenes which is actually very funny is when Mayle is being driven to see the gang boss. in a 30 second piece they manage to put a parody of Pulp Fiction and a very funny gag about answering questions. (In fact when they get to talk the secondary characters (and the thugs in particular) are given some great lines) If you can forgive the straight-to-tv look and like the Rick Mayall of Alan B'Stard instead of the Young ones or Bottom then this will have you laughing out loud.