Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 125

British Film Comedy

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I hadn’t seen that side of him” (Channel 4 Teletext, December, 1999, as cited in the
Rik Mayall Web Site).
In an on-set interview, Edmondson more or less agreed with Mayall’s assess
ment of his “dictatorial” directorial style, but added, “at least in a fascist dictator
ship, you know where you are” (making of G u est H ouse Paradiso video). Actu
ally, behind-the-scenes views of the crew in action reveal a pleasantly egalitarian
approach to the entire project. For his part, Edmondson has gone to great lengths
to dismiss any speculation that G u est H ouse Paradiso might be anything more
than a commercial entertainment. He also downplays his considerable skill as a
director, commenting that “if you’ve written the idea then directing’s not a big
thing, getting lots of people to do what you want to do” (Wills interview in Flicks,
as cited in the Adrian Edmondson Web Site). But this is both an ingenuous and
unduly modest view of his work in G uest H ouse Paradiso', in fact, the film is one
of the most assured directorial debuts of the new century. In its vicious, violent,
raucous, no-holds-barred approach to such issues as class warfare, the decaying
hold of the British empire, and the sexual mechanics of male machismo, the film is
simultaneously fresh and immediately accessible.
The vulgarity is mostly in the language, which is on a par with South Park's
more extravagant excesses, coupled with the sneering arrogance of Mayall’s “up
per clas s” character, and the seeming stupidity of Edmondson as his comic foil.
Many of the most memorable gags in the film operate at the level of simultaneous
stupidity and genius, as is the case with “candle in the eye” gag, which is used
when Eddie and Richie are struggling through an extremely narrow crawl space,
on their way to a guest’s room to steal (without any compunction whatsoever)
some of the guests’ belongings. At a particularly inopportune moment, Richie drops
the candle, and in an attempt to retrieve it, accidentally sticks the still-flaming
candle in his right eye. Shrieking with pain, he tries to explain to Eddie what’s
happened. “Candle in the eye!” he exclaims, but dim-witted Eddie is baffled.
''C andle in the eye!" Richie screams until Eddie responds with a bemused shrug,
and obligingly sticks the still-lit candle in Eddie’s left eye. A gag such as this is
both obvious and yet transcendent in its embrace of surreal stupidity; while the
entire premise is preposterous, as a piece of slapstick, the Joke is superbly ex
ecuted, even as the audience winces in pain at Richie’s predicament.
Eddie and Richie have a decidedly uneven relationship with one another. Richie
is brash, rude, snide, repellent, an upper-class twit without any real intellectual or
social credentials to back him up; Eddie is the slow camp follower, forever the
object of Richie’s verbal abuse, which he can only reply to with outbursts of infan
tile, inarticulate violence. Just as Moe Howard in The Three Stooges seemed to
live in a state of perpetual irritation, while Curly bumbled from one violent acci
dent into another, further arousing Moe’s omnipresent wrath (with Larry Fine as