Film review: Honest (2000)
My friend baron_scarpia is what one might call an Emperor of Bad Films. He doesn’t make them, obviously. But he watches them, where other less tolerant folk might not dare, and then he reviews them. So we don’t have to, as it were. Well, recently I personally watched and reviewed a particularly crap film called Penetration Angst which was the film-watching equivalent of drilling a small hole in your head and then positioning a leaking tank of petrol above you and letting it drip consistently and irritatingly directly into your brain tissue. Knowing that the Baron wouldn’t want to miss out on such an edifying filmic experience, I challenged him to watch it. In return, he challenged me to watch Honest, a film which fits nicely into any sane person’s list of “Really very appallingly bad films”, probably near the top. I don’t know if he’s seen Penetration Angst yet, but I’ve recently watched Honest, and, because I spent approx 2 hours of my life doing it which (barring some unexpected time-slowing experiment actually succeeding) I will never get back, I will annoy my LJ list by telling you about it.
Honest was designed as a vehicle for the then-popular girl band All Saints, and starred three of them: Appleton 1, Appleton 2, and Melanie Blatt. Now, when pop stars start acting, it’s generally the signal for excrement to start propelling itself towards a certain type of cooling device (OK, there are exceptions, mostly involving David Bowie or, er, Beyoncee Knowles). Britney Spears, Charlotte Church, Mariah Carey, S Club 7... What Honest does differently is actually quite clever. Knowing they have/had a loyal fan-base of, say, 10 to 14-year-old females, they went and made a film with an 18 certificate involving felony, nudity, naughty language, drug abuse and James Cosmo. In a flash they geniusly (is that a word?) alienated anybody who might reasonably want to see three moderately-talented Sarf London singers try to act. Sweet move. Way to raise the bar.
Taking this initial niggle in his stride, the director (first-time filmmaker and Eurythmics bloke) Dave Stewart and writers Dick “Likely Lads” Clement and Ian “Auf Wiedersehen Pet” La Fresnais decided they would return to the heady hedonism of London in the late 1960s, and tell a thrilling tale of plucky poverty-stricken young women turning to crime to survive and findings solace in narcotics and the lure of Communism.
Or something.
Basically, at some point (probably around the time when somebody said “Hey fellows! Let’s make a film starring some women from All Saints!”) this film hit the point of no-return and became inexorable shit. Why? The mostly feeble acting aside (Appleton 1 is better than Appleton 2, but only because she’s marginally less annoying; Blatt is given nothing to do and the audience thanks Vishnu for it; James Cosmo in an enviable role as “grief-stricken dad who sits on sofa for whole of film” gives the best performance, but doesn’t seem to expel much effort in doing so; everyone else sucks hard), the cack-handed direction aside (few films have used slow-motion, fast-motion, jittery cameras, soft focus, strobe lighting and snap cuts so liberally and nausea-inducingly as this outside of a, well, Eurythmics video), one of the main faults lies with the script. Given the reasonable pedigree of the writers, they must have been drunk, stoned or taking the piss when they submitted a script that feels as if it’s been created by compiling three dozen disconnected ideas and vague recollections of what films look like, and then put in an order decided by a random throw of the dice. And then drew penises all over it in orange crayon.
The plot, such as it is, involves the three All Saint sisters robbing some places apparently run by gangsters, dressing up as men and wearing masks as they do so. (Please to ask, why do they put on fake beards underneath their papier mache masks? Isn’t that pointless?) Anyway, they turn out to be the worst male impersonators since Marilyn Monroe sat on a space hopper and shouted “Look at my scrotum!”. And it’s all irrelevant, given how utterly crap these girls are at stealing things. When they break into a magazine office (which unaccountably has diamonds in its safe), one of them gets caught; when they try and rob a night club one of them shoots the other one and blows off her own thumb. You know, Darwin’s laws exists for a reason. Somewhere during this Appleton 1 falls for the chiselled American who caught her (and who at no point chides her for being a long-term criminal who tried to steal from him and kill him), and they make out, take drugs, go to a disco, break up, get back together again, go to Oxford, raid an art exhibition, go to France, have some sex, break some watermelons and then steal a car. Or something. At some point during the opening credits you know you’re not going to care any which way. Turns out you’re right.
Meanwhile, Appleton 2 is involved in an entirely irrelevant subplot involving a neighbour who beats his wife, so she (Appleton 2) gets a gun by giving some bloke a blow-job and then fails to kill the neighbour anyway. The Blatt just lies around in a hospital looking mildly less attractive than the other two. There’s a subplot involving Corin Redgrave as a gangland boss who wants a cut of the Appletons’ money, but he’s written off in an unfeasibly bad and unnecessary plot ‘twist’, and replaced in the narrative by a deus ex machina “evil foreign drug dealer of no identifiable nationality but has a machete” played by that guy off Shameless and Hornblower. There’s some fight scenes which serve no purpose other than to fill the ever-increasing void of plot or occurrence, and one extended trip scene which involves unerotic nudity, some smoke, trippy music and culminating in a terrible, terrible slo-mo scene where Appleton 1 and American Guy dance around in a fountain throwing jewels around. It’s just awful.
Most cripplingly of all, the film just doesn’t know what it wants to be. At one point it’s a Cockerney Lock-Stock clone with cross-dressing burglars on the lam, at the next it’s a metaphysical Marxist drama about the perils of poverty, at the next it’s a cooky chase caper complete with shagadelic outfits and gay comic relief. If only it did any of these parts well, that might be something, but it manages to cock them all up. Actually, to be fair, the most enjoyable part of the film (relatively speaking), was that crime caper part where the sisters ‘hold up’ an art exhibition in order to get hold of some money held in a mannequin’s vagina (or something), and they get mistaken for performance art and then get chased into the London Underground by aforementioned foreign drug dealer. If only all the film had been like this, at least it would have been consistent. Crap, but consistent.
As it is, by the ludicrous end of this ludicrous film, the director has lost any remaining sense of sanity and has a scene with the drug dealer cutting watermelons in half, being subdued by the girls and put up in a field as a scarecrow. It’s so crass and pointless that you should be agape that the film hasn’t yet ended, but given the dross that’s come before you are in some perverse way pleasantly surprised. You still want to be a little sick in your mouth, though.
At least the music is good.
Yes, OK, it has some breasty nudity; yes, it has some swearing; yes, it’s got naughty use of bad drugs; but if the All Saints wanted ‘credibility’ they missed the mark somewhat. Reviews on Amazon cite this as an underrated cult classic, but in my opinion they misspelt ‘cult’. The biggest crime this film commits is being vacuous and meandering. Even Jean-Claude Van Damme films have some semblance of narrative. God, even Batman & Robin did. Without narrative, unless you’re a filmmaker of acute genius, the audience is going to walk out or use violent weapons to cudgel you in your sleep. Honest is not the worst film ever-I’ve seen Battlefield Earth, Hobgoblins, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, Puma-man, American Pie presents Beta House and National Lampoon's Adam and Eve. All those are worse. But that doesn’t mean that, fundamentally, Honest is, honestly, a waste of time and celluloid. Choose life.
Honest was designed as a vehicle for the then-popular girl band All Saints, and starred three of them: Appleton 1, Appleton 2, and Melanie Blatt. Now, when pop stars start acting, it’s generally the signal for excrement to start propelling itself towards a certain type of cooling device (OK, there are exceptions, mostly involving David Bowie or, er, Beyoncee Knowles). Britney Spears, Charlotte Church, Mariah Carey, S Club 7... What Honest does differently is actually quite clever. Knowing they have/had a loyal fan-base of, say, 10 to 14-year-old females, they went and made a film with an 18 certificate involving felony, nudity, naughty language, drug abuse and James Cosmo. In a flash they geniusly (is that a word?) alienated anybody who might reasonably want to see three moderately-talented Sarf London singers try to act. Sweet move. Way to raise the bar.
Taking this initial niggle in his stride, the director (first-time filmmaker and Eurythmics bloke) Dave Stewart and writers Dick “Likely Lads” Clement and Ian “Auf Wiedersehen Pet” La Fresnais decided they would return to the heady hedonism of London in the late 1960s, and tell a thrilling tale of plucky poverty-stricken young women turning to crime to survive and findings solace in narcotics and the lure of Communism.
Or something.
Basically, at some point (probably around the time when somebody said “Hey fellows! Let’s make a film starring some women from All Saints!”) this film hit the point of no-return and became inexorable shit. Why? The mostly feeble acting aside (Appleton 1 is better than Appleton 2, but only because she’s marginally less annoying; Blatt is given nothing to do and the audience thanks Vishnu for it; James Cosmo in an enviable role as “grief-stricken dad who sits on sofa for whole of film” gives the best performance, but doesn’t seem to expel much effort in doing so; everyone else sucks hard), the cack-handed direction aside (few films have used slow-motion, fast-motion, jittery cameras, soft focus, strobe lighting and snap cuts so liberally and nausea-inducingly as this outside of a, well, Eurythmics video), one of the main faults lies with the script. Given the reasonable pedigree of the writers, they must have been drunk, stoned or taking the piss when they submitted a script that feels as if it’s been created by compiling three dozen disconnected ideas and vague recollections of what films look like, and then put in an order decided by a random throw of the dice. And then drew penises all over it in orange crayon.
The plot, such as it is, involves the three All Saint sisters robbing some places apparently run by gangsters, dressing up as men and wearing masks as they do so. (Please to ask, why do they put on fake beards underneath their papier mache masks? Isn’t that pointless?) Anyway, they turn out to be the worst male impersonators since Marilyn Monroe sat on a space hopper and shouted “Look at my scrotum!”. And it’s all irrelevant, given how utterly crap these girls are at stealing things. When they break into a magazine office (which unaccountably has diamonds in its safe), one of them gets caught; when they try and rob a night club one of them shoots the other one and blows off her own thumb. You know, Darwin’s laws exists for a reason. Somewhere during this Appleton 1 falls for the chiselled American who caught her (and who at no point chides her for being a long-term criminal who tried to steal from him and kill him), and they make out, take drugs, go to a disco, break up, get back together again, go to Oxford, raid an art exhibition, go to France, have some sex, break some watermelons and then steal a car. Or something. At some point during the opening credits you know you’re not going to care any which way. Turns out you’re right.
Meanwhile, Appleton 2 is involved in an entirely irrelevant subplot involving a neighbour who beats his wife, so she (Appleton 2) gets a gun by giving some bloke a blow-job and then fails to kill the neighbour anyway. The Blatt just lies around in a hospital looking mildly less attractive than the other two. There’s a subplot involving Corin Redgrave as a gangland boss who wants a cut of the Appletons’ money, but he’s written off in an unfeasibly bad and unnecessary plot ‘twist’, and replaced in the narrative by a deus ex machina “evil foreign drug dealer of no identifiable nationality but has a machete” played by that guy off Shameless and Hornblower. There’s some fight scenes which serve no purpose other than to fill the ever-increasing void of plot or occurrence, and one extended trip scene which involves unerotic nudity, some smoke, trippy music and culminating in a terrible, terrible slo-mo scene where Appleton 1 and American Guy dance around in a fountain throwing jewels around. It’s just awful.
Most cripplingly of all, the film just doesn’t know what it wants to be. At one point it’s a Cockerney Lock-Stock clone with cross-dressing burglars on the lam, at the next it’s a metaphysical Marxist drama about the perils of poverty, at the next it’s a cooky chase caper complete with shagadelic outfits and gay comic relief. If only it did any of these parts well, that might be something, but it manages to cock them all up. Actually, to be fair, the most enjoyable part of the film (relatively speaking), was that crime caper part where the sisters ‘hold up’ an art exhibition in order to get hold of some money held in a mannequin’s vagina (or something), and they get mistaken for performance art and then get chased into the London Underground by aforementioned foreign drug dealer. If only all the film had been like this, at least it would have been consistent. Crap, but consistent.
As it is, by the ludicrous end of this ludicrous film, the director has lost any remaining sense of sanity and has a scene with the drug dealer cutting watermelons in half, being subdued by the girls and put up in a field as a scarecrow. It’s so crass and pointless that you should be agape that the film hasn’t yet ended, but given the dross that’s come before you are in some perverse way pleasantly surprised. You still want to be a little sick in your mouth, though.
At least the music is good.
Yes, OK, it has some breasty nudity; yes, it has some swearing; yes, it’s got naughty use of bad drugs; but if the All Saints wanted ‘credibility’ they missed the mark somewhat. Reviews on Amazon cite this as an underrated cult classic, but in my opinion they misspelt ‘cult’. The biggest crime this film commits is being vacuous and meandering. Even Jean-Claude Van Damme films have some semblance of narrative. God, even Batman & Robin did. Without narrative, unless you’re a filmmaker of acute genius, the audience is going to walk out or use violent weapons to cudgel you in your sleep. Honest is not the worst film ever-I’ve seen Battlefield Earth, Hobgoblins, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, Puma-man, American Pie presents Beta House and National Lampoon's Adam and Eve. All those are worse. But that doesn’t mean that, fundamentally, Honest is, honestly, a waste of time and celluloid. Choose life.