![]() ![]() Yet poking through the thin stew served up here in vain search of the one belly laugh or handful of chuckles that might justify handing over that hard-earned tenner this weekend, one is led to the conclusion comedy has never been quite as subjective as this. Unlike Guest House Paradiso or Kevin and Perry Go Large or Keith Lemon, D'Movie is never aggressively, in-your-face bad it's more a flatly indifferent cash-in – and the devoted fanbase this character has accrued over the past decade may yet rally to ensure it does indeed become another Inbetweeners-style box-office bonanza: comedy is subjective, after all. You sense O'Carroll has diluted his own show's essence for wider multiplex consumption: while the sitcom could be broad, it was often clever with it, and never this bland. ![]() In this rushed and cramped context, the inbuilt bloopers just look unprofessional, indistinct from the other fluffed or half-hearted material the new notes of sentiment and whimsy only recall Agnes Brown-with-an-e. Yet with the exception of an opening fire safety announcement, the sitcom's meta-ness has been dialled back. Sitcom veteran Ben Kellett directs it functionally, venturing brief, touristy exteriors of Dublin – in which sparse numbers of extras are seen congregating – before retreating to safe, obvious, cheap-looking set-bound business. Brown has to defend her business from multiple threats – which could equally have served any Steptoe and Son or Are You Being Served? spin-off. Hes stolen Doc Browns newest time travel. (Anjelica Huston can, presumably, feck off.) It would not be unfair to say only modest levels of time and money have been expended on it: unlike Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, where you sensed the presence of a huddling team of writers, striving to craft new material up until the very second the cameras rolled, D'Movie runs with a plotline – Mrs. Find yourself in a secret genetics lab and use your wits to avoid becoming the prey in Jurassic World: Escape. You either found this funny or you didn't, but enough viewers did around the moment of the wildly profitable Inbetweeners film for the BBC beancounters to justify the existence of this latest exercise in brand expansion, announced onscreen as Brendan O'Carroll Mrs Brown's Boys: D'Movie. O'Carroll repositioned Agnes as the star of an old-school sitcom that didn't even feign the vaguely progressive leanings of its primetime stablemate Citizen Khan: this really was just a man in a dress, Dick Emery-style, hitting another man repeatedly over the head with a tea tray. That movie did no business whatsoever, leading writer-performer O'Carroll to reassert control over the character in much the same way Robin Williams did over his family in Mrs Doubtfire: by dragging up. The blowsy Irish market trader Agnes Brown first appeared on screen, played more or less straight by Anjelica Huston, in 1999's Agnes Browne, the actress's shrug-inducing adaptation of Brendan O'Carroll's novel The Mammy. Perhaps some fourth walls just aren't made to be broken. ![]()
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