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The
Watch, The Favour, and The Very Big Fish
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The Watch, The Favour, and The Very Big Fish is a quite delightful comedy that adroitly mixes French and British senses of farce. A tall-tale of swapped and mistaken identities, chance collisions and love gone wrong, it centres on Louis (Bob Hoskins), a photographer of kitschy religious tableaux. Louis becomes separately involved with Sybil (Natasha Richardson), whom he meets dubbing a porn movie, and a character known only as The Pianist (Jeff Goldblum), recently released from jail – not realising that together they all form an eternal triangle of fatal attractions. The visual gags catch alight from the first shots, with writer-director Ben Lewin (who, beginning as a documentarian in Britain, later made the acclaimed Australian television mini-series The Dunera Boys [1985], as well as a few underwhelming Aussie features) guiding the broad, burlesque mayhem with a sure touch. That touch was to be lost in his subsequent Lucky Break (1994). The tone of the proceedings ranges from camp to whimsical to slightly surreal, enlivened by hilarious moments of blasphemy and lewdness. Everyone in the cast is excellent, with Richardson and Goldblum giving especially funny and intricate performances. © Adrian Martin September 1993 |
