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Tom Felton, Damian Lewis and Thomasin McKenzie star in ‘Fackham Hall’<\/p>\n
“Gosford Park” meets “The Naked Gun” in new comedy movie “Fackham Hall,” which smartly satirizes British period dramas.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s nothing particularly funny about \u201cDownton Abbey<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s precisely what makes it so rife for parody in \u201cFackham Hall<\/a>\u201d (in theaters Dec. 5), a deeply silly send-up of PBS\u2019 long-running period drama, as well as other tart British fare including \u201cGosford Park\u201d and \u201cUpstairs, Downstairs.\u201d<\/p>\n Manners go out the window in the new R-rated comedy, which is packed with wall-to-wall sight gags, wordplay and pop-culture references. Think a stodgy English butler named Siri, a pair of man-hungry Bechdel sisters, or a funeral guest who\u2019s introduced as \u201cBill. Bill Bo Baggins.\u201d It\u2019s the kind of film where someone exclaims, \u201cHe saved my life in the war,\u201d only to flash back to a soldier suggesting, \u201cYou should really get that mole checked out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone takes themselves so seriously in those things, because it\u2019s all about behaviors and not overstepping the mark and understanding the hierarchy within the house,\u201d says Tim Inman, one of five writers on the movie, which also lovingly lampoons everything from Agatha Christie to \u201cMary Poppins.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe initial thing was, \u2018What is ridiculous about this source material?\u2019\u201d adds co-writer Steve Dawson. \u201cWe did a bit of a rewatch party, where we were able to just sit and watch all these films and mercilessly take the piss out of them and then write down everything we got.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFackham Hall\u201d joins the time-honored tradition of slapstick parody movies, with pratfalls and fourth-wall-breaking absurdity that\u2019s largely indebted to Mel Brooks<\/a> and the Monty Python<\/a> troupe, who helped usher the genre into the mainstream in the 1970s and \u201880s, along with \u201cAirplane!\u201d trio Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker.<\/p>\n Like its forebears, the comedy is played dead straight. In one lavish dinner scene, revelers carry on their conversations amid a cacophony of clanging silverware. A blushing bride is dragged down the aisle when her veil gets caught in a car door, while kitchen staff furiously chop up herbs \u2012 only to roll them into joints.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a hyper-specific brand of hilarity that\u2019s made a recent comeback, thanks to Liam Neeson\u2019s critically adored \u201cThe Naked Gun\u201d reboot<\/a> this past summer, as well as \u201cScary Movie 6\u201d due next year<\/a>, reuniting Anna Faris and Regina Hall for more outsized horror shenanigans. A sequel to Brooks\u2019 1987 cult classic \u201cSpaceballs<\/a>,\u201d a parody of \u201cStar Wars,\u201d is also set for 2027 starring Josh Gad.<\/p>\n \u201cThe world is in a dark place, and people are ready for a really big belly laugh,\u201d director Jim O\u2019Hanlon says of the genre\u2019s resurgence. \u201cThere hasn\u2019t been a big, laugh-out-loud comedy in cinemas for a while, and people want that communal laughter again.\u201d<\/p>\n Joke-dense spoofs were prominent throughout the \u201890s and early 2000s, with \u201cMars Attacks!\u201d and the \u201cAustin Powers<\/a>\u201d franchise, as well as \u201cWet Hot American Summer,\u201d \u201cTeam America: World Police\u201d and \u201cWalk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.\u201d But the genre fell out of favor in the last 15 years, with poorly reviewed outings such as \u201cThe Starving Games,\u201d and diminishing box-office returns for full-length parodies \u201cFifty Shades of Black\u201d and \u201cPopstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThose movies were designed to feel particularly disposable, and turned spoofing into just a question of referencing incredibly recent cultural stuff,\u201d says film and culture critic Jesse Hassenger. \u201cA lot of these movies just wind up repeating jokes from movies they’re spoofing, only more \u2018extreme.\u2019 If you’re not careful, soon you’re just loudly, stupidly ripping it off.\u201d<\/p>\n As YouTube hit peak popularity in the early 2010s, people could often find smarter and better-made spoofs online \u2013 ones that weren\u2019t beholden to \u201csome shoddy excuse for a narrative,\u201d Hassenger adds. The American version of \u201cThe Office<\/a>\u201d was similarly ubiquitous around the same time,\u00a0as viewers seemed to gravitate toward more \u201cnaturalistic,\u201d observational humor.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone was drawn to it because it was fantastic and new and fresh, and that documentary style seemed exciting,\u201d Inman says. \u201cComedy moved away from the overproduced spoof stuff for a while, to the point where now people have forgotten about spoof and they’re discovering it again. Taste just oscillates back and forth, and we\u2019re seeing it swing back toward things that are goofier, joyful and unashamedly stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n The appetite appears to be there for \u201cFackham Hall,\u201d whose writers estimate they went through roughly 35 to 40 drafts of the script, with nearly 20 alternative lines for every joke. In its first 24 hours, the movie\u2019s trailer was trending on social media and racked up more than 7.3 million views \u2013 a record for independent distributor Bleecker Street<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll see the odd comment on YouTube that says, \u2018Oh, they probably put all the good stuff in the trailer,\u2019 but we know that\u2019s not the case,\u201d co-writer Andrew Dawson says. \u201cI can think of about 200 jokes that aren\u2019t in the trailer that audiences haven\u2019t seen yet. There\u2019s a lot of detailed jokes that you can spot in the background as well: signs, record labels, book covers. It\u2019s the kind of comedy that rewards a second viewing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Felton, Damian Lewis and Thomasin McKenzie star in ‘Fackham Hall’ “Gosford Park” meets “The Naked Gun” in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[343,307,1049,1055,93,695,61,60,80365,7322,342,355,270,96308,334,333,350,96307,50863,96306,96309,38,336],"class_list":["post-175950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-affiliate","tag-arts","tag-comedy","tag-comedy-films","tag-entertainment","tag-films","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-liam","tag-liam-neeson","tag-local","tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-neeson","tag-neutral","tag-overall","tag-overall-neutral","tag-pbs","tag-satire","tag-spoofs","tag-spoofs-u0026-satire","tag-top-stories","tag-u0026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}