Just For The Record is a "comedy documentary" about a disastrous film production, which features a cast of talented actors, including Colin Salmon, Craig Fairbrass and Rik Mayall.
From the DVD cover, you would think its a gangster film, given that there's a sharp-suited Danny Dyer, a gun and a splash of red across the gritty black and white cover. Its not. Instead, its a broadly played comedy, striving for a tone of outrageousness which feels forced most of the time.
The film can be forgiven for its budgetary limitations, but it did have an interesting mix of actors to mine the comedy from. It could have been a whole lot more interesting if the framework of the film was more solidly constructed. If you consider "This Is Spinal Tap", or "For Your Consideration", with their sharp wit, interesting characters and solid direction - they're downright continuously funny.
The problem with JFTR is that, for most part, its characters talking about an event which we (the audience) see nothing of. There's hardly any 'on-set' calamities (except for Fairbrass headbutting Pertwee, and the producer getting his actor drunk). We also never see ANY of the film that's being made - so we can't see for ourselves how bad it is. It would be like Spinal Tap talking for 80 mins about how bad their tour was, but never seeing any examples of the bad stuff happening. This instantly creates a huge gap between the film and audience, because its hard to care or be interested in something without seeing for ourselves why the film was a calamity. A series of juxtaposing opinions is just wearing after 15 minutes.
Performance-wise, only Fairbrass and Pertwee show any comedic restraint. For a mockumentary to work, it must feel like the actors aren't acting. It must feel real. For most part, the performances are over-the-top (again, to try and hammer home a false sense of outrageousness). That said, the actors don't have much to work with, except clichéd film stereotypes i.e. the blonde bimbo actress, the slimy producer, the pretentious director etc. All been seen before. Another issue is (and this was probably due to budget limits), very rarely are the actors sharing screen time together. We hardly see all the characters interacting, be it on set or during the interviews, so the group dynamics feel flat. You never get a true sense of why it was all so bad, apart from being told 'it was crap'.
On a slightly nit-picky front, the audio mix at times is a bit odd: In particular, the off-camera questions from Rik Mayall are clearly dubbed, ruining the illusion that he's actually interviewing people - clearly he's not there.
Its a shame, because there was plenty of scope for this movie, but it failed to set its sights high enough, and lacked a fresh perspective.
From the DVD cover, you would think its a gangster film, given that there's a sharp-suited Danny Dyer, a gun and a splash of red across the gritty black and white cover. Its not. Instead, its a broadly played comedy, striving for a tone of outrageousness which feels forced most of the time.
The film can be forgiven for its budgetary limitations, but it did have an interesting mix of actors to mine the comedy from. It could have been a whole lot more interesting if the framework of the film was more solidly constructed. If you consider "This Is Spinal Tap", or "For Your Consideration", with their sharp wit, interesting characters and solid direction - they're downright continuously funny.
The problem with JFTR is that, for most part, its characters talking about an event which we (the audience) see nothing of. There's hardly any 'on-set' calamities (except for Fairbrass headbutting Pertwee, and the producer getting his actor drunk). We also never see ANY of the film that's being made - so we can't see for ourselves how bad it is. It would be like Spinal Tap talking for 80 mins about how bad their tour was, but never seeing any examples of the bad stuff happening. This instantly creates a huge gap between the film and audience, because its hard to care or be interested in something without seeing for ourselves why the film was a calamity. A series of juxtaposing opinions is just wearing after 15 minutes.
Performance-wise, only Fairbrass and Pertwee show any comedic restraint. For a mockumentary to work, it must feel like the actors aren't acting. It must feel real. For most part, the performances are over-the-top (again, to try and hammer home a false sense of outrageousness). That said, the actors don't have much to work with, except clichéd film stereotypes i.e. the blonde bimbo actress, the slimy producer, the pretentious director etc. All been seen before. Another issue is (and this was probably due to budget limits), very rarely are the actors sharing screen time together. We hardly see all the characters interacting, be it on set or during the interviews, so the group dynamics feel flat. You never get a true sense of why it was all so bad, apart from being told 'it was crap'.
On a slightly nit-picky front, the audio mix at times is a bit odd: In particular, the off-camera questions from Rik Mayall are clearly dubbed, ruining the illusion that he's actually interviewing people - clearly he's not there.
Its a shame, because there was plenty of scope for this movie, but it failed to set its sights high enough, and lacked a fresh perspective.
