Anticipation.
Time to test Brit-com icon Graham Fellows’ acting chops.
Enjoyment.
How do you make a granddad selling weed boring?
In Retrospect.
Put Fellows in the writing room next time, please.
Two schoolfriends join forces with an old man who accidentally started growing weed on his allotment in Richard Bracewell’s painfully unfunny comedy.
Like the doddering sexagenarian at the centre of its plot, Chicken Town lumbers along, frequently mis-stepping and fluffing its lines. It’s a dull, eye-roll-inducing half-way house of a film, neither a biting, black comedy nor an uplifting, whimsical jaunt. British comedy royalty Graham Fellows stars as Kev, who teams up with teenagers, Paula (Amelie Davies) and Jayce (Ethaniel Davy) to sell the weed he’s accidentally grown in his allotment. The few sincere interactions between this central trio are the sole highlights of the film, as Fellows’ comedy talents are wasted in a flimsy script.
Chicken Town bites off more than it can chew as a small-town, crime caper quickly spirals into conflict with the powerful family at the heart of the town’s livelihood and a serious of increasingly ridiculous acts of violence. However, instead of pouring effort into providing any standout, laugh-out-loud gags, the writer/director overly relies on these sudden but brief moments of intensity to liven up his film. The less said about the racial prejudice levelled at Jayce’s friend, Lee Matthews Jr (Ramy Ben Fredj), the better. It’s tasteless, cruel, and painfully lazy. Come film’s end I was ready to hightail it out of Chicken Town as fast as I could.
