New 'Four Lions' Trailer

I thought it was very good. Barry was brilliant and so was Waj. Omar needed his head kicking in though. But yeah hilarious for the most part, especially the first half.
 
Just come back from watching it. Thought it was great. Slightly discomforting in that it is so laugh-out-loud funny, except that while you are laughing, you are anticipating the film building up to something which is most likely not at all funny - but which you can't help laugh at anyway when it comes around. Odd atmosphere as the cinema emptied.
 
Good film with lots of laugh-out-loud moments and a few powerful ones. Very well-drawn characters and some brilliant acting from the blokes playing Omar and Waj especially.

Where it fell down a bit was in making all five of the main characters complete idiots. It was just overdoing it, and some of the sillier scenes, like the one about putting on different accents down the chemist's, jarred with the overall realism of the thing.

Since it was mostly just those 5, there were also some slightly uncomfortable moments when it felt like a film made by non-Muslims in which every Muslim was a complete feckwit. Which I'm sure wasn't the intention.

Still, much funnier than the vast majority of comedies out there.
 
Other than his ridiculous fundamentalist ideals, I thought Omar seemed to be the one character who was not a complete idiot. Also, all the other characters outside of the group were not depicted as particularly clever guys - the security guard with the squat jogging and the upside-down clown suit wasn't the brightest for example.
 
Just the ones that are showing it. Was on at the multi-screen place in Didsbury so it's probably not too difficult to see.
 
decorativeed said:
Other than his ridiculous fundamentalist ideals, I thought Omar seemed to be the one character who was not a complete idiot. Also, all the other characters outside of the group were not depicted as particularly clever guys - the security guard with the squat jogging and the upside-down clown suit wasn't the brightest for example.
Click to expand...

They were all idiots, to be fair. Omar's co-worker wasn't the brightest nor were the police and snipers near the end. That said, the Arab Jihadists in Northern Pakistan didn't come across as particularly stupid, in fact they were the only non idiotic characters in the film - if anything the film's poking fun at British people in general.
 
What I liked about the film was it didn't try to pander to political correctness. It would have been so easy for them to have made the strict Muslim brother a totally sympathetic character and the voice of reason, glossing over the distastefulness of some of the views. But they didn't; they raised the issue of women's rights quite nicely I thought.
 
Watched it last night. Err.....it was pretty funny. Morris light though. Certainly didn't generate any where near the laughs of The Day Today or Brass Eye but it's probably a little unfair to judge a movie alongside some of the best TV comedy this country has produced. Waj (is he the guy from phonejacker?) was the stand-out character and seemed to have the best lines...

"feck mini-babybell"

"What's wrong with those rabbits?"
"Waz, they're not rabbits. Where are their ears?"
"Exactly"

I also liked the fact Morris managed to convert his trademark off the wall abuse into Urdu.

Probably best seen on dvd.
 
I'd forgotten a lot of the funnier bits because I found myself coming out of the cinema considering the more serious side of it all. All I could remember quote-wise was the "Rubber dinghy rapids!".

Looking forward to watching it again.

As for not being to the standard of the Day Today or Brass Eye, it pays to remember that Morris worked with a lot of other people who were good writers in their own right on those programmes. Armando Iannucci did a lot of the Day Today stuff for example. This film he worked with the guys who write Peep Show for the first time and I thought it was quite successful but less sinister than anything he'd done before.
 
I thought the film was ace.

If you just wanted some fairly cheap laughs you could walk out happy - or alternatively there was a semi serious message delivered through the film if you wanted to analyse it a bit more deeply.

Most enjoyable watch at a cinema since Looking For Eric for me.
 
MikeUpNorth said:
What I liked about the film was it didn't try to pander to political correctness. It would have been so easy for them to have made the strict Muslim brother a totally sympathetic character and the voice of reason, glossing over the distastefulness of some of the views. But they didn't; they raised the issue of women's rights quite nicely I thought.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's true. And I guess in fairness most people who decide to blow themselves up in public places are going to be complete feckwits.

It was also impressive that they never did the moment when they look around and see all the people and the life of the city and think, I don't want to blow these nice people up. At first I missed it but then I realised they were right not to do it.

CassiusClaymore said:
"feck mini-babybell"
Click to expand...

That was the best line in it
 
Just come back from a second viewing, and it's a slightly less funny experience when you know what's coming at the end. Watched it with different people who both thought it was excellent and they were not really aware of Chris Morris's previous TV stuff. Audience reaction was slightly different - last time the place seemed to be full of Morris fans, laughing at the more subtle jokes - this time it seemed like a regular mixed bag audience - a woman at the back pissed herself laughing in fairly uncomfortable moments (the bin liner scene) but by the end an erie hush had set in...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.