everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Disappointment for a huge fan!

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Cards on the table: I think An American Werewolf in London is one of the funniest scary movies ever; one of the greatest black comedies ever; indeed, one of the greatest movies ever. Which is the main reason I found this limp, lame attempt at black comedy horror such a clunking disappointment.Burke and Hare just isn't funny. Neither is it properly 'black' or scary. What it is is boring and offensive in roughly equal measure – the former of which is quite an achievement, considering the sensational subject matter. The real Burke and Hare were by all accounts two of the most unpleasant characters you'd ever hope not to meet. They murdered 17 people, many of whom were old or infirm, for money. And I for one fail to see the humour in that.Don't get me wrong. I love a good horror comedy. I can handle as many buckets of Kensington gore as the make-up man can mix up. My personal list of favourite horror comedies would include Brain Dead; Basket Case; Reanimator, The Evil Dead; Shaun of the Dead; Theatre of Blood and Dr Terror's House of Horrors. But all those movies had wit, style and characterisation – elements sadly lacking in Burke and Hare.Now there have been lots of films about real-life serial killers, some good, some bad, some terrible. But I'm honestly struggling to think of a single one where the filmmakers actually held up the murders and their victims as objects of ridicule, played their deaths for cheap laughs (or no laughs, in this case). Just because Burke and Hare's crimes were committed a long time ago doesn't make them legitimate subjects for comedy, in my opinion.True, the movie boasts a fabulous cast. But as plenty of other reviewers have pointed out, they're all decidedly unScottish, and most of them are given nothing to say or do that makes you want to watch them. Or worse, make you care a jot about what happens to them. What Landis has forgotten, and his writers sadly never seem to have known in the first place, is that comedy, even – especially, in fact – black comedy, requires empathy from the viewer to be successful. The reason that we come away from Withnail and I feeling both elated and dejected is because we've really gotten to know those two out-of-work actors, and when they part by the bedraggled wolves in rainy Regents Park at the end, well, it's heartbreaking.I can't tell you how I felt at the end of Burke and Hare, because my wife and I switched over less than half way through and watched Million Pound Drop Live instead. And if that isn't the crowning indictment of any movie, I don't know what is.

I suppose most people who watch a lot of films develop a kind of mental shorthand that immediately alerts them to whether a film is going to be a good one or a mess, and one of mine is this: if a film made in the 1950s begins with the words 'This is a true story,' and then, a few seconds later adds the coda 'apart from the bits that aren't true,' (I'm paraphrasing here) the likelihood is that it's going to be pretty original for its era. But if a film made in 2010 begins in the same way you can be absolutely certain that it's going to be a stinker. The small alarm bells already ringing in my head after this unfortunate opening minute began to clang deafeningly when I realised that the film was written by the same team that was responsible for the woeful St. Trinians films.This is a film which expects its audience to be amused by the spectacle of two men rolling a heavy barrel to the top of a hill only to be surprised when it begins to roll of its own volition down the other side; and to hoot with laughter when a pub landlord fills the air with expletives as he ejects a patron for using foul language; and to clutch its sides, gripped by helpless mirth as a passer-by gets the wrong idea when she spots one man inspecting another man's bottom for gunshot wounds in the middle of the street.It's a shame really, because the film boasts an incredible cast and a director with the comedy-horror classic An American Werewolf in London on his CV. Plucky little Ronnie Corbett does his best to wring a few laughs from the dire script but rarely succeeds. Pegg and Serkis go through the motions with admirable professionalism but with one eye fixed firmly on their bank balance, while the audience is left to roll its eyes and wonder how many decent British scripts failed to get financial backing so that this mess could be made.

If it wasn't for the presence of Simon Pegg, it would be fair to say 'Burke and Hare' would have fallen under the slew of heavily-hyped 3D blockbusters. Fortunately that isn't the case, as 'Burke and Hare' is one of the funniest movies of the year.The plot concerns William Burke (Pegg) and William Hare (Andy Serkis, Gollum from the 'Lord of the Rings' movies) -two struggling businessmen looking for their next big idea in 1828 Edinburgh. With Scotland famed for their medical schools, they soon find their niche: selling dead bodies to doctors. With already-dead bodies in short supply, they're forced to take matters into their own hands, helped by Hare's wife Lucky (Jessica Hynes). Their scheme is pushed along by Burke's desire to finance the first all-woman production of 'Macbeth', mainly to win the attention of Jenny (Isla Fisher). Hot on their trail is Captain Tam McLintoch (Ronnie Corbett).'Burke and Hare' is a rare comedy in that it sustains the laughs - even to its bittersweet ending - without resorting to cheap gimmicks or gross-out humour (though there are a few scenes with the dead bodies being dissected, so the squeamish should be on guard). There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments as well. The film is boosted by a strong cast, which includes Bill Bailey (almost unrecognisable clean shaven), Christopher Lee, Tim Curry and Steven Merchant. My only criticism is that some of the dialogue is difficult to pick up due to the at times hard to understand Scottish accents.

During the 1820s in Edinburg, corpses are stolen so that they can be dissected and used for medical science and research. One of the doctors arranging this is Doctor Robert Knox (Tom Wilkinson). He's finding it increasingly difficult to get fresh corpses because the graves are now being guarded by the militia and also because any bodies from the executioner (Bill Bailey) are now being sent to Knox's rival, Dr. Monro (Tim Curry). When the King announces that there is a reward for the most improvement in medical science, Knox ambitiously sets out to map the inside and outside of the human body. Meanwhile, a pair of Irish swindlers in William Burke (Simon Pegg) and William Hare (Andy Serkis) find themselves broke. One of their tenants has died and they need to find a new source of income. They are hired by Knox to rob graves and bring him the fresh bodies. He's impressed with their first delivery and he pays them handsomely. Burke is reluctant but Hare manages to convince him and he is driven further when he meets a beautiful bar girl named Ginny Hawkins (Isla Fisher). She wants to start an all female stage version of Macbeth and Burke offers to help fund the project. They become romantically involved but she also keeps him deliberately at an arm's length.Whoever suggested that this painfully unfunny film should be a comedy must have had their head stuck up in the clouds of Victorian smog. Somewhere beneath the visually drab and derivatively grey palettes of John Landis' film is another picture, loosely surrounding Darwinism. It's also a remake of a Vernon's Sewell 1972 film, which was notably a horror picture. But along with the mechanical plotting of Piers Ashworth and Nick Moorcroft's lumbering screenplay, Burke and Hare as a black comedy just doesn't work. Perhaps this was an attempt to soften the sensitive concept of 'the survival of the fittest' for more conservative viewers but there's little consideration for tone, authenticity or purpose. The film is, for example, bookended by a Bill Bailey's narrator, who breaks down the fourth wall by talking directly to the audience. For what effect though when so much effort has been placed into realistically recreating the period? The rest of the film is so desperate for laughs that every secondary character is practically winking at the camera with caricature-like smugness. Tone is important in comedy because it affects the weight of any drama and conflict. When everything is as exaggerated as it is here it loses its grounding, meaning and significance. Because of this, the film is lacking in dramatic tension and irony. When it reaches its conclusion after a very brisk ninety minutes it'll be met by the collective shrugs of audiences.And though humour might be highly subjective, where is the joke in murdering the old, the dying or the overweight? It's making light of something that only the Aryan race would be proud of. The scenes where Burke and Hare smother an old woman to death make them extremely unsympathetic company. As emotionless as the rest film is, that scene is quite disturbing. You either go with the film's moral bankruptcy or you don't. Hare might have been able to talk Burke into their business because of a girl and frequent reiterations of the line 'it was out of love' but they didn't convince me. Furthermore, moments of grotesque splatter involving blood spurts, faeces and rotting corpses are like something from a bad Monty Python sketch and detract from what is already a particularly unpleasant story. The cast is talented but I don't think that Andy Serkis is scheming or sneaky enough to be much fun. Together, Burke and Hare have about as much chemistry as some of their merchandise. At least Isla Fisher is a little more flamboyant, sensible motivations notwithstanding, but the inclusion of Macbeth is transparent and threadbare at best. I don't dislike Simon Pegg as a comedian but as an actor there are some worrying signs. He seems to be playing less of a character and more of a face puller, which was also the case in Paul from earlier this year too. Technically this is actually last year's film because after its release in the UK, going as far back as October, its Australian release was delayed till now. At least they got something right.