EAT, DRINK AND TRY NOT TO KILL EACH OTHER.
Actor Steve Coogan agrees to do a tour of leading restaurants in northern England for The Observer, and takes his best friend (or enemy?) with him. This feature film was edited from a partly improvised 2010 miniseries where Coogan and Rob Brydon played fictional versions of themselves, constantly taking sly digs at each other and making endless celebrity imitations. Every fan of the miniseries may have his or her favorite scene that’s been lost in the transfer, but Michael Winterbottom hasn’t left out anything vital. The scenery is gorgeous, the food looks delicious and the movie finds the right balance between funny and dark.
2011-Britain. 111 min. Color. Produced by Andrew Eaton, Melissa Parmenter. Directed by Michael Winterbottom. Cast: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Claire Keelan (Emma), Margo Stilley, Kerry Shale. Cameo: Ben Stiller.
Last word: “I manufactured with Rob – we’d have conversations ourselves in reality, and then say, well that would be a good conversation to have, let’s have that, and you can emphasize this, and I’ll interrupt you and say this. We’d sort of figure it out before we’d do it. But some of the conversations happened completely naturally, and once they did, then we’d have to shoot the scene from other angles, and we’d have to have the conversation again, and try to cover the same ground. But we were always shooting with two cameras so we could kind of say whatever we liked in a given moment.” (Coogan, Slate)
