Burke & Hare

The film of Burke and Hare is something of a mystery. The decision to tell the story as a black comedy could have resulted in many things - it could have produced, given the talent involved (the director responsible for The Blues Brothers and Animal House and veritable who's who of British comic actors), a superior dark comedy with a touch of satire, it could have produced something overly puerile with an excess of gross-out gags, it could have produced something overly gory. All of those would have been more likely than what was actually the result. Thus it is something of a mystery how you can take an engaging story, a talented director returning from a long absence, a talented and likeable cast, a plot that has all the right elements and mix it all together to produce something so completely bland.

Its difficult to put your finger on exactly where things go wrong. There are a few funny moments. The plot has a few ridiculous stretches - like the all-woman production of Macbeth and Burke supposedly doing it all for love - but there are better films with much sillier plots. One or two of the accents are a bit a stretch, but even Isla Fischer's scottish beats Mel Gibson's. The Michael Winner cameo is cut mercifully short by a long drop of a cliff. The performances (Ronnie Corbett aside) are generally decent and Tom Wilkinson, as ever, excels and Andy Serkis and Simon Pegg make invlolving enough leads. Landis handles the action well enough and the setting has enough period detail and atmosphere.

And yet the whole feels somewhat less than the sum of the parts. The gags just feel a bit too familiar. What could be sharp satire about the rich and powerful getting away with their involvement feels blunted.

Overall - 5.5/10 There are many worse films around at the moment, many more offensive films. This isn't bad, there's just nothing particularly good about it either and you can't help feeling their should be.