This is one of my favourite recent British movies. I just read a review that compared Coogan’s Simon Garden to Inspector Clouseau – I’d never made that comparison before but it’s spot on… in fact, I’d personally say Coogan is funnier.

The Parole Officer borrows from a whole bundle of movies but comes out being better probably than any of them. All the characters are lovable in their own way and you really care about them in the end. There’s a whole load of hilarious scenes – from the rollercoaster to the art museum – and they all have great lines to go with them. They’re mostly very simple gags, but it’s Coogan that finds the freshness in them – even in the pre-credits sequence, when he falls off his chair, he does it in a way only Coogan can. If you listen to him on any of the DVD commentaries he’s done, he’s actually a fairly serious guy about comedy – he definitely is interested in the theory behind what works, and it really shows when he’s onscreen.

Finally Emma Williams – she’s hardly the star of the movie or a major character but I always notice her. A year or two following the movie she played Truly Scrumptious onstage in the West End “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” and it’s always amazing to me how different she both looks and acts in this movie. She’s got a hell of an infectious smile and really lights up all the scenes she’s in… even the one she spends most of simply yelling, “Bollocks!” My personal favourite.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 27th, 2004 at 8:29 pm in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as British, comedy, cuties, heist, Manchester. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.