Ab not so fab

>> Absolument fabuleux falls short of the Brit original

by GENEVIEVE PAIEMENT

The transition from small screen to silver screen isn’t always easy. Witness the flimsiness of 90 per cent of Saturday Night Live spin-off flicks, or, say, Absolument fabuleux, the new French film version of the British cult TV series Absolutely Fabulous. The problem with this type of effort is that the laughs often wear pretty darn thin at feature length, recalling that old saying about shortness and sweetness. And with this stretched-taut Ab Fab romp-en-français, there is the added clumsiness of transforming the intrinsically Brit characters into Gauls.

The film begins with the familiar Ab Fab device of flashing back to Eddie and Patsy’s younger days (’60s, ’70s and ’80s too!) to witness them behaving exactly the same way as they do now—debaucherously and lecherously. Set in champagne-drenched Paris, Patsy (the lovely Nathalie Baye) and Eddie (portly comedienne Josiane Balasko) get up to much the same mischief they do in the London-set series. They dress garishly, drink flute after flute of bubbly, chain-smoke cigarettes and giant doobies, snort piles of cocaine (or pastry flour, if they’ve been duped) and throw themselves at every young muscled thing in their vicinity.

Despite all the trademark, clownish sex-farce antics and drug taking, the whole thing quickly begins to feel like a cheap imitation. Many of the scenarios and gags were lifted directly from the series, while other elements are thrown in to Frenchify the film (the duo’s undying obsession with designer Jean-Paul Gauthier gets milked for lame laffs from beginning to end). Balasko, possibly the funniest woman ever to grace French film, sadly flounders as Eddie. Overacting to the nth degree, she comes off more pathetic than comedic. Eddie’s supposedly dowdy, nerdy daughter Safrane (Marie Gillain) is too beautiful to be believable and the young hunk character (Vincent Elbaz), while indeed hunky, is too bland to add any spice to the mix. There are some chuckle-inducing moments to be sure, but they are smothered by too many gags that overstay their welcome. Certainly, imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it doesn’t guarantee a good film. :

Absolument fabuleux opens Friday, April 19