Review – Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

Steve Coogan brings his much loved character Alan Partridge to the big screen in an over-the-top and downright bizarre comedy that flirts brilliantly and hilariously with bad taste. Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa follows the eponymous sort-of hero as he finds himself the willing negotiator in a siege at the North Northfolk Digital radio station, attempting to save the hostages of a crazed and disgruntled former disc jockey. Taking a swipe at everything and anything, and filled with enough dick and fart jokes to make your grandma faint, Alpha Papa is crude and absurd, but is so much fun that you can easily forgive it for being so ridiculous.

Coogan’s Alan Partridge is sardonic, dry and brazenly offensive. And while his small screen and radio iteration could be similarly incendiary, Partridge hasn’t lost any of the bite and rarely misses a beat. The support cast, including Colm Meany as skittish and unhinged DJ Pat Farrell, do well as foils to Coogan’s Partridge. Beyond Meany, however, the rest of the characters don’t get much screen time. This is well and truly the Alan Partridge show, and Coogan attacks it with enthusiastic bombast.

Loosely a story about the foibles and trappings of fame, Alpha Papa doesn’t hit any particularly resonating notes on this particular theme, but nor does it try to. Rather, the script by Coogan et al. is fast paced and sharp, and relies on the strength of its larger-than-life characters. The humour is smutty, broad and at times scathing, but at a refreshingly short 90 minutes one doesn’t have time to bemoan the lack of thematic substance.

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa is best typified in a scene where, having lost his pants on a window sill, Partridge inexplicably tucks his genitals between his legs as a policeman orders him to put his hands up. While the audience could conjure this image at their own discretion, the filmmakers decide to show Partridge standing awkwardly like a castrated eunuch anyway. It is so crude and silly, but so hilarious too.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qywG2-FC6x0&w=400]