Rating: 1/10
Running Time: 85 minutes
UK Certificate: 15
Leigh Francis as Keith Lemon – you either get him or you don’t apparently. His detractors point at his puerile, imbecilic sense of crass humour. His supporters claim that he’s cleverly satirising the world of celebrity. But with Keith Lemon: The Film it doesn’t matter which side of the comedy fence you’re on, you cannot possibly defend this utter lemon of a movie.
Leeds funnyman Leigh Francis reprises his role as Keith Lemon from his bafflingly successful television show Celebrity Juice. The mustachioed, celebrity obsessed one has become rich and gets to finally get the celebrity lifestyle he’s always craved. Into the blender go a thousand ‘celebrity’ cameos with Kelly Brook sticking around for the longest as his gold-digging girlfriend.
The list of ‘celebrity’ appearances – including the anachronistic David Hasslehoff, the creepy Jedward twins and not-even-the-funniest midget Verne Troyer – is basically a long line of desperate has-beens who’ve milked their star power dry or lost any sense of nostalgia that was once had for them. They all very obviously along for the paycheque and five extra minutes in the limelight.
The writing is awful. The jokes are rehashed, predictable and on the whole very unfunny. Understandably, with a script that was probably written in crayon on the back of a cigarette packet, a lot of the dialogue seems poorly ad-libbed and Francis’ only ploy to keep the laughs coming is to user cruder and cruder language. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of swearing (In the Loop’s Malcolm Tucker is my idol) and the occasional ‘darn it’ or ‘oh fudge’ is fine by me but there’s no intelligence behind Francis’ incessant bile. Also, the plot is incredibly directionless, boring and downright messy and the ridiculous attempts to get us all emotional over poor Keith are heavy handed and unsuccessful.
Overall, this is a lazy, money grabbing attempt to cash in on the temporary popularity of our Keith and without his current popularity this film would never have made it past the studios.
It's Got: More D-list celebrities than you can shake a stick at, crude dialogue, poor writing
It Needs: To be wiped from the annals of human history to destroy the memory of the Jedward twins
Summary
It doesn’t matter if you get Keith Lemon or not, this is still one of the worst films of 2012. Bring on the apocalypse.