Jackson Booth-Millard
The League of Gentlemen became a rather popular sketch show style sitcom, so it was almost inevitable that it would follow in the steps of other sitcoms and have a movie spin-off, written by Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson, directed by Steve Bendelack (Mr. Bean's Holiday, The Harry Hill Movie). Basically on night, Jeremy Dyson (Michael Sheen) calls the other members of The League of Gentlemen about an idea to have all the characters of Royston Vasey having tails. But the other members want to move on to other projects, and Jeremy is suddenly confronted and terrorised by three of the characters, Edward and Tulip "Tubbs" Tattsyrup (Shearsmith and Pemberton) and Papa Lazarou (Shearsmith), he tries to run, but falls off the edge of a cliff. In Royston Vasey, the village is being hit by meteors, vicar Reverend Bernice Woodall (Shearsmith) shows fellow residents Pauline Campbell-Jones (Pemberton) and Mr. Matthew Chinnery (Gatiss) that there are signs of The Apocalypse occurring. Hilary Briss (Gatiss) has escaped from prison, he finds Herr Lipp (Pemberton) on the moors and takes him hostage and uses him to steal a car driven by Geoff Tipps (Shearsmith). Fleeing the fireballs, they go into the church and find the crypt, going through a door that leads them into the real world. They wind up in the town of Hadfield, Derbyshire, the setting for Royston Vasey in The League of Gentlemen television series, the situation is explained to them by Lazarou and the Tattsyrups. Briss, Herr Lipp and Geoff Tipps travel to London to find the show creators, to confront them that their fictional world is being destroyed because they are not working together to continue writing for them. While Lipp pretends to be his creator, Steve Pemberton, Briss and Tipps read through the creators' new project, a historical horror called The King's Evil, Briss chases after an escaped Pemberton, while Tipps continues to read the script, and writes himself into it as the hero. While Lipp has become very attached to Pemberton's family, in particular his children, Briss takes Pemberton up to Hadfield to call Reece Shearsmith to tell him what is going on, Shearsmith only believes him when the real Mark Gatiss is standing in front of him and the voice of Gatiss' character Briss is talking. Shearsmith and Gatiss find and capture Herr Lipp, and they travel up to Hadfield, and step through the dimensional door to enter Royston Vasey. They try to swap hostages, but Pemberton is killed by a stray gunshot. Dr. Erasmus Pea (David Warner), the villain of The King's Evil, tries to convince Briss to leave Royston Vasey and join him, he refuses, and a battle ensues, with many fellow characters being killed. Shearsmith and Gatiss climb up the wall of the church in order to escape, but Shearsmith falls to his death. Briss kills the monster that appears, but is stabbed in the back Dr. Pea, before dying he tells Tipps that he is the only one that can save Royston Vasey. Gatiss tries to escape and return to the real world, but Herr Lipp holds him at gunpoint, Tipps manages to kill Pea, but the chaos continues. Herr Lipp threatens to kill Gatiss in the church, but the other characters try to dissuade him, as they believe if all the writers are dead, Royston Vasey will cease to exist, and they will all die. Lipp says they will be better off, because they will no longer be controlled, and things will not get better, Tipps persuades Lipp to hand him the gun, only for him to accidentally fire it and kill Gatiss. With all the writers now dead, the people of Royston Vasey dead prepare for the worst, but instead, everything calms down and The Apocalypse ends, they realise they are now free. Herr Lipp adopts some orphaned children, Mr Chinnery finds a rabbit to look after without killing it, and Bernice and Pauline appear to become romantically involved. Tipps leaves the church, waving goodbye to Edward, Tubbs and Papa Lazarou, it appears Royston Vasey can exist independently without its creators, but Dyson is still alive in a coma, and everyone in the real world now has a tail. Also starring Mark Gatiss as Mickey M. Michaels, Steve Pemberton as Steve, Reece Shearsmith as Geoff, Victoria Wood as Queen Mary II, Bernard Hill as King William III, Peter Kay as Simon Pig, Simon Pegg as Peter Cow, Emily Woof as Lindsay and Bruno Langley as Damon. Most of the recognisable and popular characters get some good moments, but this film also gives the lesser known and explored characters an opportunity for storylines and screen time, the plot is twisted and a bit difficult to explain, but it is essentially the bizarre fictional world clashing with the real world, it is weird, but that's probably what the creators wanted, and there are enough funny and dark moments to satisfy fans of the TV show, a reasonable surreal horror comedy. Worth watching!
graemejwalker
This review took longer to write than I took to watch this film. It's just plain bad. The plot is terrible in comparison to the TV shows. It is flat, unfunny and boring.It is clear that the LoG ran out of ideas long before this film was green lit. Viewers should read this as an example of not knowing when to stop.Bad editing, bad music, bad acting. Zero dynamism, zilch chemistry.A film that doesn't know what it is, made without any love to some mysterious end that leaves you depressed and feeling kind of angry that so much money was wasted.The LoG obviously were made an offer they couldn't refuse, or perhaps their egos have simply got the better of them. It's a bleak marketing push that perhaps would have been better when the LoG were fresher and more inspired.I however, did know when to stop, and did.Please! Someone try to convince me of this film's finer points!
tomdillon100
It became apparent in the first 25 mins of watching this that the writers really wanted to make a feature length film and they probably certainly enjoyed the whole process, but then seemed to forget the fact that it needed a decent plot! If the best they could do was have 3 of the dullest characters enter the real world and have 'all sorts of amusing capers' then they should have left well alone! I didn't laugh once, and that whole "Adventures of Baron Munchausen/Time Bandits" thing going on in the middle was very, very poor! Convaluted, contrived and very loose. It just seemed like a whistle stop tour of anything they thought 'might' work just to drag it out to a feature.Full of holes eg - the Royston Vasey characters needed the writers to carry on writing in order to save them, yet Jeff managed to write himself into the sub-story/time-filling William and Mary and era. If he could do this then why didn't they just carry on writing Royston themselves - duh?? And Herr Lipp's audition? What was that for? I mean what was the point? He did it, and we heard nothing else whatsoever about it? My main point is, that while I loved the series, this was an ill thought out, seemingly rushed project. Put it this way, the plot was so poor that if we didn't already know the characters (and as a fan I had a certain loyalty to carry on watching), and we relied solely on the the story itself, this would have fallen flat on its face! At best it would have gone straight to video, and at worst would never have been made in the first place! Or maybe that should be the other way round?? Truly dreadful....
