My three favourite films to remain unreleased on DVD, ie If…., O Lucky Man! and Performance, are finally coming out on the said shiny format this year. Performance is already out this week.
A few moons ago: to the Muswell Hill Odeon to see the film Hot Fuzz, the follow-up to Shaun Of The Dead. A movie that comes with such extreme self-awareness about its audience, it almost feels like there should be a closing credit saying “Now go away and talk about it on the internet, we know you will.”
The Hot Fuzz core audience is The Matey Geeks. People who like movies more than is strictly healthy, but who still manage to be vaguely functional and inclusive and get on in life. People who can quote lines of films, yet know how to go to pubs without fear, how to wear trainers and say “Cheers, mate” and mean it, how to hold down a job and get on with their more mainstream workmates, who behind their backs think they’re overgrown students. So not so much people like me, but people I know. It’s like that 60s TV sketch with John Cleese and the Two Ronnies. “I am the mainstream non-geek who runs the world. I am more functional than the Matey Geek, but the Matey Geek is more functional than Dickon Edwards.”
Which is why I feel that watching Hot Fuzz is like standing next to a friend at a party, while someone they know – but I don’t – delivers an entertaining anecdote. They’re not excluding me, yet not quite allotting me the same amount of eye contact as the person I’m standing next to. There’s a sense they’re not quite sure what to make of me. Am I their sort of audience? Not quite, but I like the anecdotalist in question, and I’m happy to stick around if they don’t mind too much.
I’ve never seen Point Break or Bad Boys 2 or any of those noisy action movies Hot Fuzz pays homage to, and have no wish to. I’ve also never been one of those boys who liked to play shoot-outs with toy guns. Or been the significant other of such boys (though one ex of mine was a boy who always wanted to be Wonder Woman). To really enjoy Hot Fuzz, you have to be one of those men who used to be one of those boys, or go out with one of those men and affectionately indulge that side of his boyishness.
Thankfully, as indulgent fan-pleasers go, Hot Fuzz is certainly a lot better than Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back. Ye gods, that was a truly shameful showing by Mr Clerks. It’s also topped the charts for a few weeks now, which means real people must like it as well as the ones who get all the references.
Although I can never quite connect with Hot Fuzz in the way it wants to connect, I enjoy it and admire it. The sheer verve of the film keeps even the most fidgety people attentive, and unlike some reviewers I don’t think it’s too long.
On the subject of boys who innately take to playing cops and robbers, when a gun – either a toy or possibly a real empty gun – was passed around at a recent drunken gathering, my inebriated instinct was not to point it in the air or at others, but to instantly put the muzzle to my head and pull the trigger. Interesting, that. So I’m more a fan of suicide in culture than action movies in culture. I was thinking how much I like the movie Heathers. A nice, good, utterly twisted black comedy.
Hot Fuzz is not at all twisted. In fact, there’s a certain playfulness and sweetness to it, despite the surfeit of comedy death scenes and unpleasant woundings. There’s also a scene involving a swan causing a car crash. I wonder if this is a reference to Peter Greenaway’s A Zed And Two Noughts, which opens with such an event?
There are, I imagine, many reviews and discussions online about Hot Fuzz, given the high internet use of the average Matey Geek. I like to think this is the first one to compare it to an 80s arthouse film about conjoined twins and decaying animals.
