Review of Festival

Introduction

Edinburgh`s a great city and hosts the Edinburgh Fringe every August. The Fringe is the World`s largest arts festival, focussing mainly on theatre and comedy. It also has a reputation of being not that good. I`ve never been so I can`t personally comment, although I am assured by residents of that fair city that it is pretty dire for the most part. I guess it was only a matter of time before someone thought it would be a good idea to try and capture the atmosphere of this famous festival on the big screen, and so here it is.

Written and directed by Annie Griffin (The Book Group - which I`ve never seen), Festival sees us following some of the hopefuls on both the theatrical and comedy portions of the Fringe, as well as a look at the judges of the 17th Annual Comedy Awards. This film is a UK Film Council production with assists from both FilmFour and Scottish Screen.

As to the plot, well the summary on the disc details page sums it up relatively well, so I won`t repeat myself here…

Video

A lot of documentary-style footage from around Edinburgh. The picture is clear, unlike some of the extras.

Audio

A 5.1 soundtrack that just isn`t required, would have been more than adequate in 2.0. There`s just nothing here that really requires surround, and the menu music is unbelievably annoying after only a short while.

Features

Unused sections and bloopers - bit of a mixed bag that doesn`t really gel together, would have been better as separate pieces. Sadly, the bloopers are on the whole unfunny.

The making of the Festival at the Festival - a ten minute featurette that looks as if it`s been filmed on someone`s old camcorder and someone`s left the resulting video tape on top of a telly for a month. Poor poor quality picture and the featurette isn`t much better.

Deleted scenes - 5 deleted scenes, none that were missed and mostly low and sometimes plain inaudible sound

Development work featurette - seven minutes of a couple of rehearsal-cum-freestyle (or whatever the luvvie expression is for making it up as you go along)

Bagpipes and Cornetas featurette - mini-documentary that explains why you hear Spanish horns alongside bagpipes during the film. This was actually more entertaining overall than the main feature.

Conclusion

Rarely do I waste my time in front of the TV watching DVDs but this is one time when I came away thinking that. The problem is that this film really doesn`t seem to know what it`s trying to be. It has a number of storylines to follow, some of them intermingled and some of them serious, whilst some are supposed to raise a laugh. On the whole it doesn`t really achieve either goal. On top of that, this film includes some quite gratuitous and explicit sex scenes that are really just not required.

So where to start? The bad first, I guess. The subplot with the paedophile priest is just a non-starter and quite crass. Are we really to believe that a priest (or is he?) with that kind of problem is likely to perform a play on the subject at the Fringe in order to confront or deal with his feelings? And then he kills himself after discovering he can`t control them? Wishful thinking on the part of the author, I feel. The Canadian trio are just a complete waste of time and only seem to be there to set up an unlikely romance between the one bloke in the troupe and the post-natally depressed mum who owns the house they are renting for the week. The whole storyline is stilted and the marriage completely unbelievable. Then there`s Sean Sullivan (Stephen Mangan), famous TV comic; a man so funny (apparently) and up his own backside that he spends the entire film either trying to upstage or insult everyone in view. I was never totally convinced by the girl who is struggling to put on a one woman show about the sister of William Wordsworth. It just felt too arty in a film that clearly isn`t, and the ending that involves her just didn`t strike a chord with me.

On the good side, we have Raquel Cassidy in a sublime performance as Petra, the downtrodden agent for Sullivan. A recovering alcoholic and the person who literally does everything for her charge, Cassidy is stunning and you cheer for her when she snaps after Sullivan goes just a little too far. Sadly her one chance at salvation and a possible relationship is squandered. Chris O`Dowd is good as the beer-soaked veteran comic Tommy O`Dwyer, but some of his jokes and dialogue are a little amiss. Daniela Nardini also takes her share of the spotlight as the arts correspondent for BBC Scotland who really doesn`t believe in the usual bluster reserved for arts correspondents. Of course, Nardini also sheds her clothes and is involved in some of the aforementioned sex scenes, but that isn`t necessarily a good thing all the time.

Unfortunately, the bad stuff outweighs the good. This film would have been better if it had chosen which line it wanted to take and had also chopped out some of the more boring/unbelievable storylines to develop the remaining characters that crucial little bit more. The comedy quotient for a film set around a Comedy Awards does need to be funny if it`s trying to be funny, but sadly it isn`t really. A tragedy set around a comedy festival would have worked better I feel, and there were some good hints of what this film could have been.

Sadly, it isn`t.