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Absolutely Fabulous - Absolutely Special (The Last Shout/In New York)Rating:
Release Date: 30 September, 2003 Retail Price: $24.98 OUR Price: $22.48 You SAVE: $2.50! Cast: |
Absolutely Fabulous - Absolutely Special (The Last Shout/In New York) Reviews
Mixed Bag
Absolutely Fabulous: The Last Shout is wonderful.
Absolutely Fabulous In New York is not.
So (and this is just a guess) marketing titans at BBC America, realising the depth of inferiority of the latter, have cut & pasted it onto a DVD mini-collection with the former, in the hopes that having-to-buy-one-with-the-other will see some sort of a return on the high-budget high-celebrity low-humour "New York" episode.
I'll handle each section separately.
"The Last Shout" sees Eddy and Patsy off on another holiday, this time to Val D'esere, to ski and to escape Saffy's bombshell - she's getting married. Sick of "bearing the burden of the Passive Destiny", militant feminist Saff has decided to bow to peer pressure and accept her well-to-do society boyfriend Paolo's offer of marriage, and Eddy, upon realising his social standing, employs a sneaky Patsy and all the PR connections and money at her disposal to give her a wedding she'll never forget.
Along the way she learns to snowboard, meets God (a wonderfully perfect Marianne Faithfull), and finally comes face-to-face with another God - or is it Lacroix, sweetie?
The brilliance of "The Last Shout" is in the simplicity. It's not choc-full of celebrity cameos, nor does it rely on the glamorous locations and jet-set lifestyle for laughs. Saunders' script crackles and sparkles with the good old Ab-Fab brand of upper-class vulgarity and excessive sang-froid, and in places, is the best work she's ever done. Patsy meeting Paolo's Mother still makes me laugh out loud even now, and Eddy's scenes on the hunt for a church and a Lacroix frock for her daughter's big day have lost none of their comic value.
Performances are fantastic; Saunders and Lumley are far, far better here than in the disjointed Series 3, and we get to see a rare, 'girly' side to Saffron that Julia Sawalha must have relished playing.
All in all, "Last Shout" is a classic, timeless moment of Ab-Fabbery, and one that no fan should do without.
And now the bad news.
Do we remember in the episode "New Year" (Series 3), Eddy saying to Oliver "If you'd said that when you arrived I might've been impressed."? Well, that (excellent) line sort of sums up the "New York" special. Gay isn't a big deal anymore. Neither is Celebrity. So when you take 2 characters who hav kept their collective fingers nailed to the Zeitgeisty Pulse for the last 12 years and put them in a situation full of redundant ideas (the coolness of being Gay, the madcap and superficial world of the Celeb), then you have a recipie for disaster. Six or seven years ago this would have been cool, but now it's sadly lost in the stagnant mire of bilge-programming like "Queer Eye" and "American Idol".
Eddy finally discovers Serge's whereabouts, as well as his sexuality, and, thanks to a well-timed trip of Patsy's, decides to go to New york to see him and let him know she loves the fact that he's gay.
What we have here is a hodge-podge of redundant jokes (Bo's Tammy-Faye Baker drag is particularly annoying, Bubble seems pointless and Saffy's ote-taking is TOTALLY out of character), awkward celebrity cameos (Wooden Graham Norton, plainly unfunny Whoopi Goldberg) and a script that is as tired and maudlin as the storyline behind it. Laughs are few and far between: Patsy is now more a charicature of her former glorious self, and Eddy has become mere narrative for the antics of the rest of the crew.
The final reunion between Eddy & Serge is a wasted potential, and, much like the rest of the episode, is a few weak jokes mired in a sea of celebrities like Debbie Harry and predictable situations like Patsy fire-dancing.
A big disappointment, the nicest thing I can say about "New York" is that it's bundled here in the same collection as "The Last Shout".
Extras are poor, outtakes are run-of-the-mill fare, and audio/video quality is average.
Only to be considered for "The Last Shout" (which, thankfully, is twice as long as "New York"), this collection really is a very mixed bag of laughs and snores.
One for the fans.
Better than some would have you believe...
Okay, first: the people who have complained about the actual DVD transfer have every right to be disappointed. "Gay" should be widescreen, but is not on this disc. The theme songs for both specials are removed. And, worst of all, the box takes the special name "Gay" and redubs it "In New York." Insulting. So there's that out of the way.
As everyone else has said, "The Last Shout" is great. It's nice to actually have this available in Region 1. Pretty much everything works in "The Last Shout," even if the ending falls a bit flat.
I'd also like to say, though, that "Gay" is good as well. A lot of people (using phrases like "recycled vomit") have said otherwise. They say it's just jumping on the gay-TV bandwagon for easy laughs and "fabulous" atmosphere. And this is how it appears... until Eddy actually meets her son (spoiler alert). The real gag is that Serge, despite the gay stereotype, is possibly more boring than "dull-as-dishwater" Saffy. So Eddy's larger-than-life world view once again seems completely silly when compared with the pragmatism of her child... it's just the other one, this time.
No, "Gay" isn't as good as "The Last Shout," but it's not bad. I'd say it's better than most of Series 4, which, in my opinion, was the most inconsistent. Then again, it's not up to the superb quality of Series 5, either.
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