Absolutely Anything‘s Biggest Crime Is Going Absolutely Nowhere

Sci - fi funniness rarely have a weight of expectation like Absolutely Anything does . A script 20 years in the making . The first movie from Monty Python ’s Terry Jones in decades . A stamp made up of British funniness icons . A premise that allows … . well , dead anything . And it conk out to do anything significant ( or funny ) with any of it .

freebooter ahead … not that it really matters .

To sum up it up only , Absolutely Anything is basically Bruce Almighty but with a sci - fi gimmick : a council of noncitizen ( voiced by Monty Python stars Terry Jones , John Cleese , Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin ) decides to ruin Earth . But before they can do so , they have to conduct a tryout — a single random human will be allow godlike powers allowing them to do anything they bid for 10 days with a wafture of their hand . If the human uses the office for trade good , the Earth is saved from destruction . If they ’re vain and selfish , the Earth is doomed .

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The prey ? ab initio , Sarah Palin — the close utterly Anything comes to a well timed joke , despite it being a joke that ’s a good twosome of age out on the relevancy scale — before settling on fair and pleasant ™ English teacher Neil Clarke ( Simon Pegg ) . Seriously , the film hammers home how fair and nice Neil is that at some stage they may as well have replace Simon Pegg with a composition board cutout that ’s had “ medium and pleasant ” scribbled over the thorax .

What ensues is about as typical as you ’d look . Neil starts off vain , wishing himself simply conveniences like clothes that magically dress him every morning , the ability for his detent Dennis to utter — Robin Williams in what is , sadly , his net oeuvre — and , of course , the chance to get close to his attractive downstairs neighbor Catherine ( Kate Beckinsale ) . It then preserve as you ’d expect : wacky high jinks ensue as Neil ’s wishes substitute between achiever and comical tragedy ( almost always in the venous blood vessel of him being broadly speaking descriptive with his wish , only to go “ No , I did n’t signify that , I intend this … ” ) before ultimately the film goes full rom - com as Neil apply his powers on Catherine to make her interested in him , then she actually becomes concerned in him because the picture show needs a happy ending , and the aliens decide that yes , Neil really is average and pleasant ™ enough to guarantee the Earth ’s safe .

Absolutely Anything would be relentlessly forgettable if not for the fact that it ’s the low - budget sci - fi comedy equivalent of a stripling in school who know they ’re smart enough to be an A - grade student , but instead puts in the minimal amount of crusade to reach a passing grade and nothing more . I intend , look at this cast :

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That is a blasted casting and a half right there . And yet , everyone is either deplorably underused or has a plot that go nowhere . Pegg is perhaps the most flagrant offender , on car - pilot in that sort of “ hapless Brit humankind - tyke ” pilot that he ’s been playing since Spaced — chop and mixed and reheat into a middling paste , never rising above or inquiring said world - childishness as heso bright did in World ’s terminal . Beckinsale sire nothing to do as Pegg ’s romantic foil . Eddie Izzard and Joanna Lumley in special feel spectacularly wasted ; Izzard has a few unspoiled scenes as the set aside master at Neil ’s school , finding himself in more and more outlandish billet as Neil ’s powers go awry , but there ’s so little of him that it feels wasted . Lumley play a Holy Writ critic at Catherine ’s place of work that does n’t read the book she critique ( that ’s the salary off . It ’s just that joke , scraped over a few too many panorama ) , one - note and barely there .

It ’s telling that it ’s Robin Williams , bring his voice to the cookie - and - humping - mad Dennis the Dog , who seems to be having the most fun — but even then , it ’s phoning in a familiar public presentation he had done so many time over his vocation . Like that snotty teenager in school , you desire to seize these people by shoulders , smartly shaking them and scream “ you may do so much more!”—that is , when you ’re not checking your watch and wondering when it ’ll all be over . A middling damnatory statement considering the film is just diffident of an 60 minutes - and - a - half long . All that disappointment and see checking leaves time for barely anything else to happen , and you almost feel thankful for it .

The underachieving cover in the film ’s sci - fi inclination and its premise in general . Despite Neil ’s exotic power giving him a blank canvass to do anything he likes , the want of imagination with which they ’re used instead tightens like a frailty around the film , feel startlingly modified as it trots out rote scenario after rote scenario . There ’s no consequences to Neil ’s selection to utilise his power ; he can just as easily correct his mistakes as he can make them , and does so on a regular basis , so there ’s no dramatic weight . There ’s no inquiring as to why he suddenly up to of godlike power , because Absolutely Anything is a photographic film about getting vaguely tight to considering ask these interesting questions , before readily deciding against it .

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And sometimes it genuinely considers assay . There ’s moments where Neil contemplates whether he has the right to take away the ability for his hound to speak after realise that all his dog talks about is biscuits and humping , or when he rear the moral quandary of whether his power should be used to exercise quixotic control over a char , something the movie does with both Neil himself as well as one of Neil ’s instruction colleagues ( toy by Sanjeev Bhaskar ) . Not only does Neil do that 2nd matter anyway after excogitate if he has the right — which is kind of gross — but these questions are also shortly ask and then immediately dangle with no recompense . There ’s no interesting honorable argument about the use of his powers that shapes Neil into a secure humanity than he was at the start of the film . There ’s no actual playing with the scientific discipline fable setting to do anything interesting with what should be an interesting premise . perfectly Anything turn over less meter to considering these idea than it gives to an extended sequence where a patch of CGI bounder poop flips itself into a toilet , a moment so excruciatingly drawn out it ’s like the celluloid thinks it ’s its crowning comedic moment . If that ’s not damn , I do n’t know what it is .

Even with the interesting cast behind it , it ’s difficult to remember why utterly Anything had any prospect attached to it in the first place . It ’s nothing but rehashed ideas and a bunch of excellent , funny citizenry aimlessly cheat from shot to scene with piddling theme of what they ’re doing . Even the tone itself does n’t seem to know what it ’s doing , wildly veering between home - sport put-on and knock off several farad - bomb ( startlingly , it has a valuation in the UK that allows children less than 12 see it with an accompany adult)—the exact sort of juvenile childishness thatPegg himself is more and more looking to outstrip himself from .

In the end , perfectly Anything instils only one affair in its viewer : the desire to do dead anything but determine it .

Photo: Jae C. Hong