Our two protagonists are still struggling to maintain an actively dissolute lifestyle on an increasingly minimal budget when a major opportunity raises its head. And then it all goes horribly wrong...
For the benefit of our US and worldwide friends, Absolutely Fabulous (or AbFab, as it became known) was a BBC sitcom which ran for 41 episodes from 1992, though with some lengthy gaps between series. Written by Jennifer Saunders, she also played Edina Monsoon, an amoral and self-centred PR representative, mostly accompanied by Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley), an equally self-centred and perpetually drunk and drugged ex-model.
I'll offer up a confession: I watched very little of AbFab on TV as I didn't care for the main characters and consequently didn't find the series very funny. I wasn't particularly looking forward to the movie, which I saw in a fairly full cinema with a mature audience. Who laughed a lot. As did I.
Jennifer Saunders has broadened the appeal of the series by taking it out of the small TV studio locations: the final third of the film takes place in the South of France. Eddie and Patsy remain motivated solely by greed and selfishness (and Julia Sawalha as Eddie's daughter Saffy plays her conscience, as usual), but there is sufficient material here to make it clear that their lifestyle doesn't actually enhance their quality of life, and that Eddie may occasionally glimpse that this is the case.
There is a decent story here - based on silliness admittedly, but it works - with some solid laughs: verbal, as well as some good knockabout humour. And there are a host of celebrity cameos from fashion and showbiz, ranging from blink and you'll miss 'em to rather more extended cameos (Lulu as herself, amusingly, delivers all her dialogue in broad Glaswegian).
I enjoyed this rather more than I expected to, although I expect that it will not travel terribly well.
For the benefit of our US and worldwide friends, Absolutely Fabulous (or AbFab, as it became known) was a BBC sitcom which ran for 41 episodes from 1992, though with some lengthy gaps between series. Written by Jennifer Saunders, she also played Edina Monsoon, an amoral and self-centred PR representative, mostly accompanied by Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley), an equally self-centred and perpetually drunk and drugged ex-model.
I'll offer up a confession: I watched very little of AbFab on TV as I didn't care for the main characters and consequently didn't find the series very funny. I wasn't particularly looking forward to the movie, which I saw in a fairly full cinema with a mature audience. Who laughed a lot. As did I.
Jennifer Saunders has broadened the appeal of the series by taking it out of the small TV studio locations: the final third of the film takes place in the South of France. Eddie and Patsy remain motivated solely by greed and selfishness (and Julia Sawalha as Eddie's daughter Saffy plays her conscience, as usual), but there is sufficient material here to make it clear that their lifestyle doesn't actually enhance their quality of life, and that Eddie may occasionally glimpse that this is the case.
There is a decent story here - based on silliness admittedly, but it works - with some solid laughs: verbal, as well as some good knockabout humour. And there are a host of celebrity cameos from fashion and showbiz, ranging from blink and you'll miss 'em to rather more extended cameos (Lulu as herself, amusingly, delivers all her dialogue in broad Glaswegian).
I enjoyed this rather more than I expected to, although I expect that it will not travel terribly well.