Fat Slags (2004)

You know a film is going to be good when it is by the Director of Kevin & Perry Go Large

I haven't seen it in a while but I remember really laughing at Freddy Got Fingered. It was a really stupid film. Really stupid. It was full of gross-out humour but it really went for it and it didnt seem childish, due to it being too bizarre. Fat Slags, on the other hand, is really juvenile. It doesn't take risks. It doesn't do anything new. It isn't funny. It doesn't have any characters that you feel any sympathy for at all. It is a mess. Possibly the worst film I have ever seen.

However, it wasn't boring. It was difficult to take but there was such an onslaught of shit jokes and things happening and z-list celebrities appearing and then disappearing that it was, sort of, easy to watch. Easier than something like Monster A-Go-Go or Plan 9.

The film, which is a live action version of the Viz comic strip of the same name, is about two overweight, northern ladies who like shagging and eating and punching people. their names don't really matter.They are played by Fiona Allen (of Smack The Pony 'n' shit - the one who always seemed to be trying too hard during the unfunny songs at the end of the show - WHY DID SHE AGREE TO THIS?) and Sophie Thompson (of EastEnders, costume dramas and being Emma Thompson's sister fame - WHY, SOPHIE, WHY?). They get sacked from their job by John Thompson (Cold Feet, Steve Coogan's sidekick, The Fast Show, Corrie - WHY!?) for blowing up the place where they work. They breifly talk about how their job is the only good thing about their life, thus deliberately telegraphing that they'll lose them soon. The first joke that I can really recall is a visual gag (the Slags would laugh at the word 'gag' - it's one of those films), where a door that has "Show Us Your Pass" written on it is blown up in to the air by the aforementioned explosion, and lands on John Thompson (WHY?) and then something else lands, covering the P in Pass. You see, it now reads "Show Us Your Ass."

For some reason the people involved didn't get to this part of the script and just put it down. Talented people.

From here they learn they've been asked to the BBC to take part in a depate about the neutrition of northern women. This is a set peice to get them amongst the less disgusting people of London (except they are horrible in a different way, with their shunning of fat people in clothes shops (Naomi Campbell (WHY?...Oh wait, Naomi Campbell)), etc). Here we meet a super rich dickhead (Jerry O'Connell - the fat kid from Stand By Me, Sliders, other stuff - WHY!?) and his lackeys (Anthony Head - WHY!?) and Geri Halliwell (see Naomi Campbell). Jerry gets hit on the head by a pot plant, is fascinated by a pen, sees Fat Slags, falls for them straight away and sets out to make them stars. Blah..blah...blah... Angus Deaton (WHY?) ...blah...blah - then DOLPH LUNDGREN (WHY!? - this is the lowest point of this mans career. Say what you like about Masters Of The Universe and Rocky 4, this is FAR worse).

WHY?!

Anyway, the girls fart, burp and swear (which are treated as jokes in and of themselves) for about an hour. They make it as stars. Gerri Halliwell puts on weight and Naomi eats a burger because people are all sheep and buy in to what is fashionable at the time, etc etc etc. We get the odd flash of naked fat suits. Fucking hilarious. Only it isn't.

Towards the end, Jerry gets his cock accidentally bitten off by a Fat Slag (Sophie Thompson) and bangs his head and realises that he doesnt love them. And then....well, the last clip is removed from YouTube so I don't know how it ends!!! Great.

There is a subplot with their northern boyfriends - they make some anti french joke in a geordie accent, get interegated by PUNT AND DENIS (WTF?!) who cannot understand their Geordie accent and then shag some women in bhurkas because Punt and Denis confuse something they say for Osama Bin Laden and deport them to Afganistan. Don't know how it ended for them either - and I don't care. On of them is played by the police officer in People Like Us.

The thing is, they didn't really do the gross out stuff properly. a dildo in a cake isnt funny and it isn't gross. Biting off a cock might be one or both of those things but it is only mentioned and not shown so it isn't either. If you are doing gross out show it. Show the womans face covered in blood as she tries to reattach it or something. Freddy Got Fingered has the famous baby scene and the broken leg licking scene and the animal wanking scenes and it works (for some). Fat Slags works for no one. It is too lowbrow for even most fairly lowbrow people (although, I vaguely recall my Dad saying it was funny - WHY?).

There is one scene that works as a gross out thing (not funny, just made me think "that is horrible") - when we cut from a guy (one of the Geordies) vomiting and cut it with some horrible looking yellow sauce being dumped on a kebab, so it looks like he's vom'd on the kebab.

There is also a scene where a joke almost made me smirk but they overdid it. This is a comment made by Anthony Head after they realise the laptop has been stolen. They then labour the joke by essentially doing the same joke again.

Having said all of this, I still have a fondness for the film. I don't know if it is just because I feel like I achieved something by watching it all (well, as much was on YouTube), or because I like to think about how it got made (WHY?) and how the people involved feel about it, or if it is because I know I am funnier and it makes me feel good about myself. It might be a lot to do with the latter. It is true to say that you can see most of the jokes coming (COMING - LOL) and know what is going to happen next so you know that you could, at very least, have written as well if not better than the actual writers. Everyline is the dumbest logical thing that could be said. The only thing that this doesn't work for is the random shit that makes no sense. And when each fart will happen (you know it will happen, but when - usually around every three minutes - but when exactly?). By random shit that makes no sense I men things like when Fiona Allen sits on her friends dog and flattens it (obvious so far) then throws the disk like dog out of the window, hitting an old man who farts, falls into a wheelbarrow and explodes. That written down is far funnier than the actuality of it.

This film is truly terrible, one of the worst films that has ever come in to existance. Their are films that have no budget (50s-60s B-Movies), vanity projects (Manos, The Room) and straight to DVD action films starring wrestlers - many of these are bad but they stand little chance of being any better than that, and there is no expectation of it being better. Fat Slags hardly has Waterworlds budget but it is a film that should have a built in fanbase (the Viz readers) and it has funny and famous people in it, but it misses the mark by so much that it is actually heading in the opposite direction to the mark and is continuing to get further away as we speak. And because of this I am actually quite looking forward to watching it again. With friends, of course. This is made for mocking. You will want to meet the people from the film just to ask "what the fuck were you thinking? Surely you get sent scripts all the time, why this?" I'm still stunned at it's badness. Utterly amazed. Awe-struck. Wow.

0/10 - must see.