Review
JAMIE EAST AT THE MOVIES
Horrible Histories’ film version misses the cast and jokes from the TV series
WHAT have the Romans ever done for us? Thankfully, rather than have to reprise classic Monty Python to bewildered kids, we can now just plonk them in front of this.
The first movie version of the “now surely a national treasure” children’s comedy/history series of books and TV ‘Horrible Histories’ focuses on Emperor Nero’s battle with the Celtic rebellion leader Boudicca as well as his fearsome mother Agrippina.
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Roman teenager Atti gets sent to Britain (known as ‘The Stain’ by Europe… hmmmm) where he meets Orla, who is intent on joining the rebellion.
Fans of the decade-old series will know the drill - a relatively complex historical story is dissected, digested and vomited back up as an interesting, fart-laden musical story - heavy on the gross and daft and more-often than not, teaching you a bunch of things along the way.
If you’ve never seen a second of it, it's probably best described as a slightly puerile yet educational Blackadder.
As with all brilliant kid’s telly (from Tiswas to SM:TV), the key is that it never once serves its audience short, or thinks the age of its viewers mean they can get away with serving up a half-baked product.
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Its writing is clever, the songs are well-crafted and memorable and the cast really get stuck in. Which is why this bigger version feels a little… iffy.
It begins very well indeed with Derek Jacobi of all people giving it a proper "I, Claudius” death scene parody and Warwick Davies demanding his gladiators give it “CX percent” but ultimately the casting left me perplexed and the somewhat inevitable format adjustments (moving from short, sharp sketches to a full movie plotline) don’t really pay off.
I missed the usual troupe - Simon Farnaby, Matthew Baynton and the like. Here, there seems to have been a weird compulsion to fill it full of people who get by on being mediocre at best (Sanjeev Bhaskar, Lee Mack and Kim Catrall, I’m looking at you).
MOST READ IN FILM
That’s not to say there aren’t some proper funny people there - the always excellent Tony Way, Kevin Clifton and Nick Frost are present and Kate Nash gives good welly as Boudicca.
Rising to the top of unforgivable HH sins though, is relegating poor Rattus Rattus to barely a cameo. For shame!
The joke rate (it claims to have upwards of 500+ here) misses as many as it hits, as do the musical numbers, but for all its misgivings, it’s daft enough and had just about enough proper belly laughs to carry it, but if this is to be a regular occurrence they’d be wise to revert back to form a little bit more. Just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should.
Horrible Histories (PG)
★★★☆☆
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