Sergeant Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is the cream of the London police force…er…police service, that is, force is such a strong word. At any rate, Angel excels at everything he does in the line of duty and has devoted his life to that duty even to alienating the woman in his life and, finally, getting himself transferred out of the city. Why the transfer? Well, he did his job so well that he was making the other police officers look bad.
New assignment: Sandford. Sandford is a beautiful village in the English countryside that has been voted the best village year after year…and probably the only place in the world with a zero crime rate. Angel begins fighting off boredom the moment he arrives in the new town and busts a bunch of underage drinkers and a drunk driver his first night there – the day before he’s scheduled to begin work.
The next morning Angel reports for duty to find the drunk driver he brought in the night before…donning a police uniform and introducing himself as Danny Butterman, Sgt. Angel’s new partner. At first Angel merely puts up with Butterman’s endless yammering about various action flicks as he adjusts to his newly mundane life…but then they are called in for an especially gruesome “car accident” with two casualties. Angel is convinced it’s not an accident but the townspeople insist that’s all it could possibly be…even as the casualty rate piles up in more and more improbable “accidents” and a sinister truth about this little town begins to unfold.
This is another film that I came into with absolutely no expectations; my significant other picked the movie out for the Netflix list and I surreptitiously nudged it down the list until I finally watched the preview and decided it might not be too bad and decided to push it up to the top of the list and get it over with. After all was said and done I think I ended up enjoying the film more than he did, but only minimally. He’s one that loves slapstick comedy and enjoys lighthearted and easy-going comedy. I, on the other hand, tend to lean toward the darker side of comedy.
For the dark bit this film fits in pretty well…they try to throw in some of the light-hearted comedy but for the most part those bits just didn’t do it for me. As for the darker parts…I’m big on the psychotics and there was a scene that I thought was just hilarious…unfortunately, that scene was the only one that I found to be hilarious. For the most part this film tries really hard to be funny but just doesn’t strike my funny bone, I give it points for the fairly original ideas (by the creators of Shaun of the Dead) though it was neither morbid enough on the one side of the spectrum for me nor ridiculous enough to strike me as very funny.
I’ll take the opportunity to throw a parental advisory in here as there is a surprising amount of blood and disassembled body parts throughout the film that are certainly realistic enough to disturb younger viewers if slightly (but not a lot) less so to the adult eye.
Overall there were some witty and entertaining parts but nothing that actually made me laugh aloud which is generally the point of comedies but not always the point of black comedies, with the content in this film it seems like it tries to be a bit of both and does succeed in a small way, though overall just didn’t catch my attention and the sense of humor was a little too dry for the comedy lover in our family.
