A Look at Fackham Hall – This Rapid-Fire, Witty Downton Abbey Spoof Which Is Pleasantly Throwaway.
It could be the sense of an ending era pervading: subsequent to a lengthy span of quiet, the spoof is making a return. This summer saw the revival of this playful category, which, when done well, skewers the pretensions of excessively solemn genres with a barrage of exaggerated stereotypes, physical comedy, and dumb-brilliant double entendres.
Playful eras, so it goes, give rise to knowingly unserious, gag-packed, welcome light entertainment.
The Newest Offering in This Absurd Wave
The latest of these goofy parodies arrives as Fackham Hall, a takeoff on the British period drama that needles the highly satirizable self-importance of gilded English costume epics. Co-written by British-Irish comedian Jimmy Carr and directed by Jim O'Hanlon, the movie has a wealth of material to work with and uses all of it.
Starting with a ludicrous start to a outrageous finale, this amusing upper-class adventure fills every one of its 97 minutes with puns and routines that vary from the juvenile up to the authentically hilarious.
A Send-Up of Aristocrats and Servants
Similar to Downton, Fackham Hall presents a pastiche of very self-important the nobility and excessively servile help. The narrative revolves around the feckless Lord Davenport (brought to life by a wonderfully pretentious Damian Lewis) and his literature-hating wife, Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston). After losing their four sons in a series of unfortunate mishaps, their aspirations fall upon securing unions for their two girls.
The younger daughter, Poppy (Emma Laird), has achieved the aristocratic objective of betrothal to the appropriate first cousin, Archibald (a wonderfully unctuous Tom Felton). Yet after she backs out, the burden shifts to the unattached elder sister, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie), described as a spinster already and and possesses dangerously modern notions regarding women's independence.
Its Comedy Works Best
The spoof fares much better when joking about the suffocating norms imposed on early 20th-century females – a topic typically treated for earnest storytelling. The archetype of idealized femininity provides the most fertile material for mockery.
The storyline, as is fitting for a deliberately silly spoof, is of lesser importance to the gags. The co-writer serves them up coming at a pleasantly funny clip. There is a killing, a farcical probe, and a star-crossed attraction involving the roguish street urchin Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) and Rose.
A Note on Frivolous Amusement
Everything is for harmless amusement, but that very quality comes with constraints. The dialed-up silliness of a spoof might grate quickly, and the comic fuel in this instance expires at the intersection of sketch and a full-length film.
At a certain point, audiences could long to go back to the world of (at least a modicum of) logic. Yet, you have to admire a genuine dedication to the artform. In an age where we might to entertain ourselves to death, we might as well see the funny side.
