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United Kingdom 1995
Directed by
Peter Chesholm
128 minutes
Rated PG

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
3.5 stars

Funny Bones

Funny Bones is a low-key, black comedy which returns to the classic tragi-comic terrain of the circus and sad clowns. The material, written by the director with Peter Flannery is well interpreted by a fine international cast including Oliver Platt, Jerry Lewis and Leslie Caron. Joanna Lumley's part was cut out of the film and there is disappointingly little of Oliver Reed's performance, nearly the entire premise of the opening sequence involving some magical eggs and a quartet of incompetent French scoundrels headed by Ticky Holgado being inexplicably lost from the narrative.

It is, however, English stand-up comic, Lee Evans, who is the film's strongest card, with Chesholm rightly building the film around him. Platt plays Tommy Fawkes, a stand-up comic and son of famous comedian, George Fawkes (Lewis) who on his opening night in Las Vegas bombs. Tommy flees to Blackpool in an attempt to get back to his roots (aka funny bones) for it was here that he grew up until the age of six. Chelsom does a fine job of directing, giving the film a good deal of visual pizzazz and leavening the quite dark narrative with all manner of vaudevillian routines, the most outstanding of which being one by Evans, as Jack, the near-autistic comic genius. Whilst the core premise, that Tommy's father stole his material from Jack’s father and uncle is not fleshed out this matters little to what is an eccentrically entertaining and undeservedly neglected film.

 

 

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