Burke and Hare
Dir: John Landis
2010
***
Burke and Hare is quite an odd film really. Half of me thinks it was a strange film for Landis to make as a come back but then on the other hand, it's similar in many ways to his first films. It is constantly amusing but there aren't any real belly laugh moments. It's slightly deadpan in its humour but not as deadpan as I think it wanted to be, with many sketches falling flat and leaving me (and the Wife) rather confused. The lack of soundtrack doesn't do the film any favours either. Adding humour to the story of the two men but never deviating from the facts works surprisingly well though but I think it may feel a bit confused to many. Pegg and Serkis do a great job I thought, and I really enjoyed the cameo performances by Bill Bailey, Christopher Lee, Jessica Hynes and Paul Whitehouse. I had no idea Ronnie Corbett was in it and seeing him with a fairly big part was brilliant, the film gets a star for his performance alone. Other cameos were somewhat pointless though and were only for name-sake, Stephen Merchant in particular had a pointless 5 seconds of holding a foot - no where near as funny as that might sound. Ray Harryhausen's cameo was nice, although blink and you will miss it (it is another excuse for me to tell you that I once met him though). Overall, it was odd but a good odd.