Review by Steve Bennett

Producers did not release the Ab Fab film to the critics ahead of its release yesterday, which is rarely a vote of confidence.  Add to that the fact that it’s a big-screen adaptation of a sitcom – a genre with a patchy track record, The Inbetweeners Movie notwithstanding – and that it uses the tired and tested plot device of plonking their characters somewhere foreign, and the signs are not encouraging.

Yet despite such portents, Absolutely Fabulous is as much of a fun, raucous romp as fans would have hoped for –  director Mandie Fletcher throwing proceedings  into the preposterous story and high camp with as much vigour now as there was when the series started a rather incredible 24 years ago. 

Sure the plot is rickety, but the characters are as indestructible as Patsy’s liver, being so larger than life. They always were ridiculous, so as they steadfastly refuse to act their age – Edina now being the grandmother of a teenager – they look even more comically foolish, much as they would be loathe to admit it.

The story, as has been well-trailed, is that Edina accidentally tips Kate Moss into the Thames, where she’s presumed drowned. Cue a national outpouring of grief for the People’s Caner, and Edina becoming a pariah. ‘Of course I know what a pariah is sweetie. It’s a fish’.

With her PR business down on its uppers, Eddy hatches a plan with Patsy to decamp to the South of France and snare a rich porn baron from Patsy’s past and escape the opprobrium back home.

The frenetic plot often seems like a loose framework to hang sketches on to, from the wonderful (the budget airline flight featuring Rebel Wilson as a bitchy air hostess) to the clunking (Saffy singing to the drag queens of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern because… well, it’s hard and futile to explain), to the entirely expected (a cliched car chase from involving a tiny Citroen van and frustrated gendarmes down steep and narrow cobbled alleys),

But amid the big, silly, set pieces Sanders has snuck in some sly lines and references, right up to the Some Like It Hot homage at the end. I loved ‘Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat – the five most beautiful words in the English language’, which got no reaction from the audience I was in, who guffawed at the more obvious jokes.

All the favourite characters, of course, get a an airing, from Kathy Burke’s brutal magazine editor Magda to Jane Horrocks’s delightfully batty Bubble – initially seen here wearing a dress made of hashtags – and who turns out to own an extravagant Bubble Palace on the French Riviera.

The film is, of course, full of celebrity cameos, some justified, some not. Jon Hamm’s shuddering flashback when he realises it was Patsy who took his virginity all those years ago is priceless, but Graham Norton’s stiff appearance – his acting range is so limited he has difficulty playing himself – is gratuitous.

It’s slightly strange, then, when you see someone as well-known as Peep Show’s Robert Webb turn up not as themselves, but as a character – in his case a putative love-interest for the unemotive Saffy. But then if you have trouble suspending disbelief, Ab Fab’s probably never going to be for you. Even though there are some underpinning themes about dealing with ageing, these are quickly overwhelmed by the next bit of slapstick.

Other stand-outs are Barry Humphries, who makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss it appearance as Dame Edna, but otherwise revels in his favourite metier: the oleaginous sleazeball, the man Joanna Lumley’s Patsy tries to entrap, and Nick Mohammed steals scenes as fashion show assistant Caspar – extra-camp even amid this forest of poseurs.  As Saffy’s 14-year-old daughter Lola, Indeyarna Donaldson-Holness is promising, but her character too frequently abandoned as the script finds something more silly to do.

It’s all infused with an Infectious spirit of zestful fun – except perhaps when Lumley is sneering out some savagely callous putdown to Saffy – and sometimes that’s all you need.

Review date: 2 Jul 2016
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett