In the last 25 years or so, television has brought just about every taboo into American living rooms to no great fuss. The debut episode of “Game of Thrones” ended with a major character shoving a child from a tower window after the moppet caught him bedding his sister. Attempted murder and incest, no big deal. And to think, “Game of Thrones” is as close to monoculture as you can get in 2016. Fortyish years earlier, “Maude” incited a culture panic when Bea Arthur’s title character chose to have an abortion two months before Roe v. Wade was settled by the Supreme Court. Good heavens!
TV networks’ standards and practices departments began to rapidly slacken their grip in the early 2000s. The credit (or blame) for this shift is largely laid at the feet of two pioneering HBO shows: “Sex and the City” and “The Sopranos.” But it was a small BBC sitcom that marked the crucial turning point of televised impropriety. “Absolutely Fabulous” premiered in 1992 and was wildly subversive for its time. Long before Samantha Jones complained about the taste of her lover’s “funky spunk” and Tony Soprano strangled an enemy while visiting a college with his daughter, Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone stumbled, drunk and high, out of countless black sedans.
Both were middle-aged women for whom London’s Swinging Sixties scene wasn’t just a distinct moment in time they lived through, but an ongoing ethos. They chased fads and, in Patsy’s case, much younger men. And yet, they (barely) held down elite careers in PR and fashion media. Jennifer Saunders (“Eddy”) and Joanna Lumley (“Pats”) were the total messes you could root for, glamorous antiheroes worthy of celebration. This was especially true if you were hopelessly sardonic, or at the very least proudly gay.
Edina and Patsy are still up to no good in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, a feature film that can’t seem to justify its leap from the small screen. Though the aperture has widened during the 90 minutes of this extended “Ab Fab” episode, all the shoehorned-in hallmarks of cinema detract from what once made the show great. The best parts of the series were shot indoors, often in a kitchen, and they involved the clash between the hedonistic Eddy and her straight-laced daughter, Saffy (a theatrically dowdy Julia Sawalha). Other characters would enter the mix (like the hapless assistant Bubble and Edina’s nameless mother, played by Jane Horrocks and June Whitfield, respectively) to bring varying degrees of domestic hilarity. Even when the show traveled to Morocco or New York City, the results always felt small in scale thanks to Saunders’ sharp writing, which undertook the heavy lifting. (She penned the film’s subpar screenplay, as well.)
In Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, Saunders and Lumley abscond to the French Riviera after Edina pushes Kate Moss into the Thames, apparently causing the supermodel’s watery demise. That’s the basic plot. But with little story comes great responsibility. If the film were as regularly funny as its opening scene (the rare return to full “Ab Fab” glory), you could forgive this dull parade of celebrity cameos (Jon Hamm, Stella McCartney) and incessant callbacks to the show’s heyday.
Instead, we’re treated to a flimsy string of wacky situations that attempt to add up to a comic rumination on lost youth and the ephemerality of existence. During the film’s climax, Edina delivers a monologue about her many woes. She’s, in her own estimation, overweight and old, a sad clown begging for pity. But the first episode of “Absolutely Fabulous” accomplished the same feat with many more laughs and a deeper sense of pathos. Like a warped record spinning on a turntable, Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie skips on the same groove. Its thematic repetition is stultifying. Its lack of good jokes is unforgivable. Its very existence is a shame.
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