Having discovered a Jackie Collins book where the main character is called Nick Angel, the real Nick Angel felt strange reading the sexual exploits of someone with his own name. It is this book that leads him to wonder what it must be like to have famous namesakes. Scanning the electoral register, Nick learns that pretty much every famous fictional or real famous person has a namesake somewhere in the UK and he sets out to meet and interview them to hear their stories and see if it has affected their lives.
This film has such a curious premise that it is worth seeing even if you're not sure what it is trying to achieve or what you are meant to be taking from it. The aim seems to be no more than just meeting these people and I suppose that is the main thrust of the film certainly I wouldn't expect to learn anything particularly deep from people on the sole basis of their name but this does set up plenty of interesting little interviews. None of those involved have any one great story to tell but it is interesting hearing their thoughts on their names. Julius Caesar is one of a line of about 18 relatives with that name, Birmingham's Ghenis Khan is a pacifist who wants everyone to just get along, Donald Duck (named before the Disney character) is a good humoured man in Scotland but Maxine Carr decides to get married, in part so that she can lose the association with the other Maxine Carr. Nothing is earth shattering here in terms of story but each is interesting and each person is worth having a brief snapshot of.
The name association is well used and it is interesting to see how the namesake has affected their live some of them seem unbothered by it while Michael Barrymore seems to feel he has a great affinity with the real Barrymore (in one of the more tragic/comic of the tales). Nick Angel directs well but doesn't bring as much humour or involvement into the film as he could have done. I suppose he had a difficult task if he played it for laughs then he would have been no better than others who have teased these people but he didn't have the running time to really go in-depth with each case. I suppose he did well enough and the lack of strong point was down to the nature of the film rather than any weakness on his part.
Overall this is an interesting little film that is worth seeing just for the appeal of hearing the people chat. It has no real message and no real aim so some viewers may feel 'what was the point of that', but it came across to me like a chat in a pub with a group of interesting people who all have a little something to say and that is just about worth sitting 25 minutes for.