Run Fat Boy, Run :: Wessex Scene Online

Run Fat Boy, Run

Simon Pegg likes to workout for his films

12th October 2007
Phil Reynolds

About this film

Title	Run Fatboy Run
Director	David Schwimmer
Release Date	7 September 2007
Certificate
Genres	Comedy, Romance, Sport
Our Rating	4.0/5.0
Shown at Union Films Sunday 9th December 2007 6:00pm, 9:00pm

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More by Phil Reynolds

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Run Fat Boy Trailer

Simon Pegg teams up with David Schwimmer to create yet another refreshing British comedy.

To most Americans the English are a curious folk. Raised on a diet of Hugh Grant films and Mary Poppins, they see us as a nation of twinkly-eyed shopkeepers, who spend our days queuing and being polite. Luckily for us, David Schwimmer isn’t one of them.

Strange as it is to say, Schwimmer’s first foray into mainstream cinema, and his first stab at capturing the real essence of British life, and humour, comes much closer to encapsulating Cool Britannia than any number of recent British flicks. He gets us, and our funny ways, it seems.

From the snippets of modern British rockers The Fratellis and The Kaiser Chiefs, and the prominent Bowie t-shirt stretched over Simon Pegg’s imaginary paunch, Run, Fat Boy, Run is a film in love with its own national identity; an identity that underlies the film’s very British sense of humour.

The film tells the story of Dennis, who runs away from his pregnant fiancée on their wedding day. Six years later, and Dennis is working as a security guard for a women’s clothing store, while his ex-partner has moved on. And it’s only then that he decides he wants her back.

All the classic components of British comedy make an appearance. Including the deligwhtful absurdity of hearing children and the elderly casually swearing; the so-astute-it’s-cruel banter between two friends, a loserish protagonist who faces impossible odds of success and most importantly, a heavy dose of cartoonish, slapstick violence, not seen since ‘Bottom’ graced our television screens back in the late nineties.

Not only is the film genuinely very funny, but it’s consistently so. Scenes of drama are tempered with touching moments of humour that help lift what would otherwise have been rather flat characters into charmingly human comic creations. The bulk of the film is carried by British comic institution Simon Pegg, who is now so adept at the loveable loser role (after both series of ‘Spaced’ and then ‘Shaun of The Dead’) that he plays the part of Dennis perfectly. Dylan Moran is on hand to play himself once more, wheeling out the same performance of ‘cantankerous Irishman’ that served him so excellently in Black Books, though he’s so funny you’ll hardly mind.

However, Schwimmer’s love of Britain isn’t only seen in the silly grin of Simon Pegg. Every scene of the film is drenched in London hallmarks. Whole scenes are shot in the back of black cabs, against the misty London skyline or behind red brick walls that look like they belong in Eastenders. And the film’s final act, where famous monuments lurk beautifully in the back of each frame, is a wonderful change, especially when the only appearances London has made on celluloid this summer were an unflattering London-eye rescue by The Fantastic Four, and a post-Apocalyptic nightmare in Twenty Eight Weeks later.

In bringing Run, Fat Boy, Run to the screen Schwimmer and Pegg have created a refreshing British comedy which will not only delight both British and American audiences, but they’ve managed it without rolling out any of our worst stereotypes. See it now.