![]() ![]() ![]() Perversely, that leaves Big in Japan feeling at its most aimless whenever it’s trying to get itself somewhere: the self-contained skits, muttered asides and gonzo running gags are the parts that really shine, from an ongoing misunderstanding about the Japanese custom of removing one’s shoes indoors to Chabuddy’s one-sided feud with the label’s unsettlingly slick A&R man, Taka (Ken Yamamura). People in sitcoms generally don't change at all, while people in films can rarely afford not to – and a movie-sized plot, with its multiple emotional crests and dips, isn’t the kind of environment these characters were built to thrive in. But there’s an inevitable and perhaps unavoidable hitch. The ensuing fish-out-of-water escapade, partly shot guerrilla-style in Tokyo’s teeming streets and neon alleys, feels like a realistic best-case scenario – it’s a warm-hearted, splashily expansive reunion gig, with some screamingly funny new material and a willingness to tinker with the formula in ways that wouldn’t have been possible in the old half-hour format. Only Steves has misgivings, namely Japan’s “massive drugs problem – you can’t get drugs anywhere.” A Japanese record label offers to fly the boys over for a concert and publicity tour, which sounds like the big break they’ve been waiting for, and they hungrily accept. This time the destination is the Olympically topical city of Tokyo, where unbeknownst to the boys – MC Grindah (Allan Mustafa), DJ Beats (Hugo Chegwin), Steves (Steve Stamp), Decoy (Daniel Sylvester Woolford) and their wheeling-dealing sort-of-manager, Chabuddy G (Asim Chaudhry) – a popular game show has been using their 2016 track Heart Monitor Riddem as a jingle, and as a result the song’s become a cult hit. So it should come as no surprise that the urban music entrepreneurs of People Just Do Nothing – the mockumentary series about the goings-on at Kurupt FM, Brentford’s premier pirate radio station – have decided to horn in on the action. It started in 1959, when the reluctant conscripts of The Army Game shipped out to the Middle East for the spin-off film I Only Arsked – and by the 1970s, t he casts of shows like On the Buses and Are You Being Served? were touring such exotic locales as Pontins Prestatyn and Costa Plonka, bringing their vast television audiences along by the coach-load.Įven now, the tactic continues to yield healthy box office returns: £16 million for Absolutely Fabulous in 2016 £78.4 million for The Inbetweeners, somehow, across 20. Sending the cast of a sitcom on holiday is less of a gimmick these days than a dubious British cultural tradition. Dir: Jack Clough Starring: Allan Mustafa, Hugo Chegwin, Asim Chaudhry, Steve Stamp, Daniel Sylvester Woolford, Lily Brazier, Ken Yamamura, Hitomi Sono. ![]()
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