Alan Partridge

Film (2013)

With Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge), Colm Meaney (Pat Farrell), Felicity Montagu (Lynn Benfield)

Alan Partridge is a narcissistic DJ at a local radio station in Norwich, England. When the station is overtaken by a large corporation and the jobs of those who work at the station are threatened, someone else flips out, things go wildly awry and we get to see how mean, manipulative and still somehow oddly likeable this self-serving character can be.

Steve Coogan is naturally a very funny guy and he does make a bold attempt to turn the eponymous lead of this film into a ridiculous exponent of a tragicomedy. The results are mixed.

Coogan has developed the satirical Alan Partridge character, himself a narcissistic radio and television personality with a long professional career, through radio and television series and specials over the past twenty-plus years. My guess is that the cooler quality of those media has enabled the ridiculous nature of the character to shine clearly through.

On film, a hotter medium, that ridiculous nature seems to get overcooked. Rather than finding the character silly and the situation ludicrously funny, the film is largely depressing, with only odd moments of glee. In that hotter context, the offbeat humor gets strangely warped, and one needs to really stretch to find it funny.

In this film, the tone is not light and ludicrous, but more like Monty Python meets Dog Day Afternoon. Superficial dignity hides deeper self-absorption which promotes outright violence. The first two can provide a funny setup on a cool madcap television comedy. Adding the third element to make a film that has critical drama as well as spoofy humor risks the integrity of the first two and makes them all collapse into one another.

I found Coogan’s recent serious performance in Philomena (2013) more compelling, and the tighter, more subtle humor in The Trip (2010) better for his comedic talents on film. He tries with very broad humor here in Alan Partridge, but the cinematic tragedy-cum-spoof context does not do it much service. The film is more unsettling than hilarious, with odd moments that are laugh-worthy more because of discomfort than humor.

Indeed that humor often thrives on upending the most solemn corners of experience is a truism, but its success depends on the tone in which it carries that out. In Alan Partridge, the psychological meltdown of a fellow worker and the acts of violence that result are not caricatured enough to make a humorous point. Coogan tries to moon his way through the apparent tragedy but that is not really enough to provide a dominantly gleeful spirit. One tries to smile at the attempt, but ultimately feels mixed about the results deeper down.

– BADMan