Alan Partridge Alpha Papa – Film Review

Steve Coogan transfers his Norwich local DJ character from TV to the big screen with lots of energy and very considerable comic skill. There are many other actors straight and comedic to back him up, but this is the Coogan Show, like it or lump it. Let’s be honest, there is something faintly creepy and irritating about Partridge as well as funny. So he thinks he’s great but maybe he’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

The movie is quite rude and a bit violent but basically all very cosy and old-fashioned and essentially British, so no one in the UK will feel too bad about it. Some of it, well most of it really, is just a lot of silly nonsense, but there are more laughs to be found than you could reasonably expect. There are a surprisingly large number of actually really quite witty lines and funny dialogue in an obviously much-honed screenplay. So laughs are assured, unless you can’t stand Partridge, in which case you wouldn’t go to see it anyway and I guess wouldn’t be reading this review either.

Here there’s plenty of Partridge. But a 90-minute movie comedy can’t just be a series of sketches and gags, of course, so the artificially constructed framework of a plot is needed and one is carefully provided.

That plot starts with Partridge’s radio station being taken over by ruthless moneymen. This means economies and redundancies. Someone’s got to go, either Alan Partridge or his long-term friend and colleague, Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney). The strangely smug and selfish Partridge ruthlessly talks the new owners into keeping him and firing the union-loving Irishman, who’s then fired at no notice. Farrell leaves the building but returns with a big shotgun. He holds the staff hostage and a siege starts. With Partridge safe on the outside, the police decide to recruit him reluctantly to bring Farrell out of the radio station and save the lives of the hostages.

Once the plot starts up, there’s no going back. They’re stuck with it, banging away at its thriller story of the siege and the tension of what’s going to happen to Partridge and Meaney. The trouble is that we know Partridge is going to survive (in case any sequels are needed) and we don’t really give a rat’s ass about the Meaney character.

A more surreal and freewheeling vehicle for Partridge might have been better. Don’t ask me right now what this could be, but if they want to make a sequel I could come up with an idea or two for them. This one’s a bit stuck in its one groove of the radio station, making it seem cramped and telly bound.

But back to the plus side. A good proportion of the audience I saw it with were consistently laughing out loud from the get-go, some of the laughs just titters but many of them huge guffaws and bellows. People in my row were actually rocking in the seats and wiping away tears of laughter. Coogan really should have been there to witness it. He’d rightly have been very gratified.

(C) Derek Winnert 2013 derekwinnert.com