Vic Reeves
- 66 years old
- English
- Actor, writer and composer
Press clippings Page 10
Movies about comedy are rarely funny but Funny Cow takes the sad clown cliché to such a grim extreme it becomes almost laughable. Starring the excellent Maxine Peake as an aspiring British stand-up in the sexist, racist, homophobic environs of the Northern working men's clubs of the 1970s and early 1980s, the film around her is such a wilfully incoherent mess it renders her performance all but dead on arrival.
She plays the eponymous Funny Cow (no other character name is given), a battered wife who has apparently found success by transforming the trauma of her life into a stage act that mixes the sort of politically incorrect gags of the era with uncomfortable confessionals about her childhood, her marriage and her surroundings. Using what seems like a television special or a monologue-based theatre show as a framing device, the film deploys random flashbacks (with occasional magical realist flourishes) to various incidents in her life in order to track her evolution from defiant child who stood up to her violent father (Stephen Graham) to self-determining woman able to conquer the male-dominated club circuit with racist and fat-shaming jokes of her own.
Along the way she's mentored by a terminally depressed veteran comic (Alun Armstrong) and meets a cartoonishly conceived bookseller (a woefully miscast Paddy Considine), whose Pygmalion fantasies she's more than happy to exploit as she escapes her brutal marriage to the knuckle-dragging Bob (played by the film's writer Tony Pitts). Blink-and-you'll-miss-them cameos from the likes of Vic Reeves and John Bishop capture some of the sad, broken spirit of the variety circuit, but the film's determination to avoid the rise-fall-redemption character arc of the biopic (even a fictional biopic) backfires. By plotting a more elliptical and impressionistic course - one perhaps inspired by Nicholas Winding Refn's Bronson or the Andy Serkis-starring Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll - Funny Cow might give some sense of the chaos of its protagonist's life, but that's not the same thing as making it compelling on screen. In the end it feels like a hollow and rather pointless exercise.
Alistair Hawkness, The Scotsman, 20th April 2018Review: Funny Cow
Maxine Peake captivates in a film that takes a serious look at being funny.
Emma Simmonds, The List, 16th April 2018Vic Reeves is eyeing a return to Coronation Street
The comedian has made no secret of his love of the long-running ITV soap, and after a stint on the show last year, seems intent on making a comeback sometime in the future.
The Sun, 1st April 2018Chortle Awards 2018 nominees
The nominees for the Chortle Awards 2018 have been announced. Mat Ewins, Hannah Gadsby, John Kearns and Joseph Morpurgo are up for Best Show.
British Comedy Guide, 7th February 2018Vic Reeves aka Jim Moir Settles Phone Hacking Case
Jim Moir - aka comedian Vic Reeves - has settled his case over phone-hacking allegations just before it went to court.
Bruce Dessau, Beyond The Joke, 18th January 2018Vic Reeves to return to Coronation Street?
Vic Reeves has hinted he may reprise his role as Colin Callen in Coronation Street in the future because he's not being killed off.
Female First, 5th January 2018Vic and Bob's Big Night Out review
The middle-aged dads of alternative comedy return once more with a holiday special which -as can only be expected from the pair- has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas or the New Year.
Ruby Martin, Cult Box, 30th December 2017Vic & Bob's Big Night Out review
Vic Reeves Big Night Out is back - or at least some bits of it are back.
Ian Wolf, On The Box, 29th December 2017Vic and Bob's Big Night Out, review
The hugely influential 90s comedy show returned - but they didn't make a fuss.
Ed Power, The Telegraph, 29th December 2017Vic & Bob's Big Night Out, BBC2, review
As uniquely strange, surreal and inspired as ever.
Jeff Robson, i Newspaper, 29th December 2017