A Liar’s Autobiography – The Untrue Story Of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman Direc ted by Bil l Jon e s, Je ff Simp s on, Ben T i m lett Voices of Grah am C ha p m a n, Jo hn Cl eese , Terry Jon e s Re leased 8 February
ith roles as Brain of Nazareth, King Arthur and the plain-speaking Colonel character who regularly interrupted the flow of Monty Python whenever he felt things were “getting too silly”, Graham Chapman occasionally appeared to be a touchstone of sense and reason within the swirling madness of the Flying Circus. Off screen, nothing could have been further from the truth. His pipe, tweeds and patrician air – not to mention the fact that he was a fully qualified doctor – belied rampant alcoholism, private homosexuality and the carnageous fallout that often arose from being bezzie mates with fulltime crazy Keith Moon of The Who. His 1980 memoir, A Liar’s Autobiography (Volume VI), is a looseleaf mix of semifictionalised reminiscence and phantasmagoric deathbed fever dream. It’s a slim, sprawling, strangely affecting book and one that hardly suggests itself to cinematic adaptation. Fair play, then, to directors Bill Jones, Jeff Simpson and Ben Timlett for ditching any kind of straight-up biographical approach to such riotous material and instead presenting episodes from Chapman’s life in a series of splintered animations produced by an array of graphic design houses. The risk with any such technique, however, is that it will fail to hold together a cohesive narrative and, sad to say, this is more often the case than not.
The opening hour is not only badly fractured but especially low on laughs as childhood holidays and schooling at Eton are presented in a stilted and straightforward manner. It’s not until the final stretch that the film really hits stride, with Chapman’s boozy, druggy, extended late-’70s LA sojourn presented as a kaleidoscopic tumult of star-studded pool parties and lunatic sex. These later sections – as well as an utterly surreal excursion into space with David Hockney and Alan Bennett – are spellbinding and far truer to the spirit of the book than the mere animated transcription that makes up the early scenes. It’s a shame that the filmmakers didn’t embrace this kind of spiralling chaos from the off – Chapman himself would have surely approved. Adam Lee Davies
on “a bit of a sabbatical” while he drinks his way through the loss of his wife. If all this sounds like a gentle Irish comedy, having an amiable laugh at the inevitably eccentric locals as much as at the many visitors, and all set in a locale reminiscent of Father Ted’s Craggy Island, then that is exactly what Jon Wright’s Grabbers offers. It is the kind of cosily clichéd view of the Republic, all grassy coastlines and friendly craic, that goes down as easy as a pint of Guinness with those viewers who long nostalgically for the Old Country. Only there is another alien recently arrived on the island, that will (maybe) disrupt this winsome idyll – a rapidly breeding, ravenous (and, most horrifying of all, teetotal!) thing from outer space that has come to do a bit of its own weekend fishing. It is, or rather they are, spectacularly realised, its/their squiddy oddness both terrifying
and kinda cute, which makes Grabbers an Irish tentacular Tremors – an icky creature feature with the emphasis on comedy and character, ending (not unlike Shaun Of The Dead) in a riotous pub booze-up, with human romance amidst all the extra-terrestrial reproduction. Anton Bitel
Anticipation . P ython docs aren’t exactly thin on the ground. Enjoyment. A bit – if not completely – different the norm. In Retr o spect. Fades in the mind all too quickly. REVIEWS
Grabbers Direc ted by Jon Wr ig ht S tarring R ic h ard Coy le , Ruth Bradley, R usse ll Tov e y Re leased 28 Dec embe r
ou really are Irish,” says marine ecologist Dr Adam Smith (Russell Tovey) to Garda Ciarán O’Shea, after the local policeman, under the influence of alcohol, has once again acted without forethought. Yet Smith’s national stereotyping is slyly ironised by the fact that O’Shea is played by Richard Coyle, himself an Englishman, and often, thanks to his standout role in the TV comedy Coupling, mistaken for a Welshman. If Smith sounds a tad defensive, he’s not the only outsider on the fictional Island of Erin. Uptight Garda Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley) has just come over from Dublin for a two week posting, there’s an impudent Eastern European builder whose unspellable name immunises him against ever getting cautioned by the police, and even O’Shea is, in the opinion of gossipy pub landlady Una (Bronagh Gallagher), just there
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Anticipation . Hoping for The Guard meets Isolation... Enjoyment. ...but very happy with Ballykissang el meets Tremors! In Retr o spect. Spectacular, tentacular, craic-filled fun, forgotten by morning.