ianlouisiana Review of Staggered

Staggered (1994)

Not as clever as it thinks it is - nor as funny,unfortunately.

[6/10 · 14 December 2009]

Not as clever as it thinks it is.Nor as funny,unfortunately.Mr Clunes is amiable enough,but it takes more than amiability to carry a whole movie.The best performance by far is from Miss Sylvia Sims as his prospective mother - in - law,oozing with contempt for his,well,amiability,I suppose.He certainly seems to have little enough going for him,until you discover that his 27 year old fiancée must marry by her 28th birthday in order to inherit a £750,000 fortune,a small fact she has kept from him but not her ex and Clunes's best friend and boss,Mr M.Praed. Marooned by Praed on a Scottish island after his stag night,Clunes must find his way home in time for the wedding a few days later. His Odyssey takes him to a police station in Newcastle where he is brutalised by a detective with a Brummy accent(before Geordie became fashionable),a hospital where Miss A.Chancellor's unlikely pathologist for some reason falls in love with him,and the actual wedding where his erstwhile best friend has ousted him in his fiancée's affections. Told in a somewhat arty - crafty style with Clunes as his own videoed Greek Chorus,"Staggered" - stripped of it's pretensions,might have made an amusing 30 minute TV comedy,unfortunately,laden with "symbolism" and trying to prove how clever it is has merely made it rather tedious. Griff Rhys Jones,by the way,is terrible.