Reviews

Fry, fascinated by desperate decadence, naturally alights on Waugh's Vile Bodies, an apparently double-edged.

Unfortunately Fry lacks Waugh's gift for laconic and strongly felt characterisation and indulges in some somewhat leaden and obvious elucidation of character, revealing characters of limited sympathy that one cannot find the energy to care about.

Fry's years of skit-writing shine through, however, and some scenes are object lessons in how to simultaneously amuse and move plot along. Unfortunately it doesn't add up to a film of great depth or consequence.

The ending is somewhat double-edged, being either an ironic happy ending of contemptible characters or a triumph of love redeemed by hardship. Either way it fails to satisfy, the ironic ending revealing a lack of interest in the characters' fortunes, or too many loose plot ends that are brushed over to make it "work".

A benign interpretation of this film is that it is harmless fun with some weak points. The plot is ridiculous, and generates pleasure insofar as one can pick holes in its premise, "twists" and developments. There were so many implausibilities in this film to relate, but I'll stick to one: we are asked to believe it plausible that *elite spies* would believe that someone who graduated "top of his class at MIT", and who clearly has what it takes to earn "200K a year and live a nice life", and who has failed to become a spy would take a *data entry job* at CIA headquarters.

Further, the technical aspects of the film are incredibly implausible: why make a techno-thriller when you can't even bluster a realistic maguffin? We are asked in all seriousness to believe that there is a "computer virus that can go down electrical cables", and that CIA's HQ has "no hard drives".

A more sinister interpretation comes when a bonus on the DVD claims that this film was made with the connivance of the CIA itself. That the film reveals nothing of substance about the CIA's training beyond what you could guess yourself, and shows the CIA to be techno-rich and brain-poor is either realistic and worrying, or, more likely, means that this is probably what they want you to think and that this film doesn't even work on an "insight" level.

In short - stick to Bond; compared to this it appears on *some* levels to be plausible.