Keith Lemon: The Film (Bad Comedy Review)

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After I got back from this film I went to my computer. I sat down at my PC and thought of just what it must have taken to create this thing, this blight, this cinematic skid mark on the UK film industry! I thought of how many zeros must have gone into the budget of this production, with this script, fully approved and allowed to be nationally distributed; then considered how it might have otherwise been spent. How many lives it might have improved had it been donated to a charity, how it might have been used to reinforce England’s failing industry, how it could have been put towards making a far better film with actual ideas and originality. Instead it was wasted on this.

Keith Lemon: The Film is without a doubt the worst film I have ever seen. Let’s ignore for a moment that Leigh Francis’ style isn’t for everyone. That the story idea of someone rising to fame, letting it get to his head, then ending up in rags again has been in so many bad comedies, done to death so many times, it would have taken a truly masterful writer to make it work. Let’s ignore the shoddy camerawork, the downright cheap looking sets, the insultingly clichéd twists. Let’s just look at the one thing, the one thing, the film did which would have made or broke it: the humour.

You know when you’re stuck in a room with someone and they’re telling an offensively bad, racially insulting sex joke? When you’re feeling like you should just up and leave, and the guy telling it is just dragging it out more and more, so you can witness every inept failure and disgusting detail to the point of tedium? That’s this film. It’s a bad sex joke done for over one hour.

Every time Francis opens his fat gob, he’s talking about orifices, holes and making terrible jokes about fluids and crotch regions. None stop, from beginning to end. There is one joke involving ejaculation and penis enlargement which is so repugnantly wrong I cannot muster the words to express how vile it is.

The few times he does halt this endless bombardment of clichéd, disgusting jokes is when the thin trail of breadcrumbs which makes up the plot manages to get some focus placed upon it or he thinks of something worse to show us. He ends up wheeling out decade old jokes involving Craig David, Spice Girls and a continual barrage of cameos from faded stars in a ham fisted effort to get a laugh. Half of them seemed desperate to be on the screen just to say they’ve been in a film, the rest were acting as if there was someone with a revolver had forced them onto the set.

Good lord David Hasselhoff, normally I wouldn’t say it; but this film was beneath you!

Worse still is that when he’s not spewing disgusting jokes or throwing celebrities into scenes, Francis is using this as an ego trip. Almost every scene with other characters is spent with them expressing how great a guy he is, announcing how wonderful his character is. It’s the sort of obvious self promotion you’d expect to find in self-insert fanfiction written by a twelve year old, but managing to be somehow even less self-aware. It’s only made worse with Francis’ character being completely and utterly morally bankrupt.

There is little else which actually needs to be said about this – It is by far the worst film of the decade and by existing it makes previous punchlines like Howard the Duck look to be of a higher quality. There’s no more which needs to be said. Friedberg and Seltzer’s productions, Ed Wood’s films, Uwe Boll’s bastardisations like Alone in the Dark; none even come close to being as bad as Keith Lemon: The Film. The only thing which stops it taking the special place of pure hatred James Cameron’s Avatar occupies in my heart is that people seem to realise just how bad it is and it never insults you for being born a human.

Don’t just avoid this film, flee from it, destroy any copy you find and hope that no one involved is ever allowed to get even close to a film studio ever again.

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Keith Lemon: The Film and all related characters and media are owned by Lionsgate.