Documentary following stand-up comedian Roy 'Chubby' Brown as he tours England. The documentary investigates if he is as offensive as he has been labeled.Documentary following stand-up comedian Roy 'Chubby' Brown as he tours England. The documentary investigates if he is as offensive as he has been labeled.Documentary following stand-up comedian Roy 'Chubby' Brown as he tours England. The documentary investigates if he is as offensive as he has been labeled.
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Did you know
- ConnectionsFeatures The League of Gentlemen: Death in Royston Vasey (2000)
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Interesting and engaging but hard not to see the missed potential - Yapp's old colleague Theroux could have done better
Roy "Chubby" Brown was once a family entertainer but decades ago he made the decision to "go blue" and hasn't looked back. Now he plays to about 150,000 fans annually, sells a live DVD every Christmas and has a turnover of over £40,000,000 from sales of tapes and DVD's. However, other than League of Gentlemen and a few other very brief appearances, he has mostly been out of the mainstream and off television. Will Yapp spends a month with Royston Veasey to try and work out what is show and what is real.
Shown on Channel 4 in a late night slot and screened with warnings before the film and in each and every commercial break, this film is certainly not one that you should watch if you are upset by rough language or coarse humour. Indeed this is pretty much the reason for the film because Yapp seems keen to explore the character of Veasey (Brown) in the style that he once did with Louis Theroux. It is understandable then that Yapp shares this style but just a shame that he has struggled to really escape the shadow of Theroux whether it be with this film or with the earlier film with Bruce Forsyth. Here he gets a great subject but doesn't really manage to do a great deal with it as a director, instead the film is really made by "Chubby" himself when he lets his guard down.
As a casual viewer who has never seen more than a clip of the man, you almost want him to be a total racist and monster but he really isn't. Instead what you get is a reasonably self-effacing character at times who never pretends to be more than a Blackpool stand-up who plays to small crowds of drunks. Using this version of him as the base, the film becomes interesting as this is contrasted with some of the racist things that he comes out with as part of his normal life some of it is like his stand-up and it is extremely racist, no matter what he says. Yapp doesn't make the most of this.
We do see Veasey discuss his views but he gets away with the weakest logic and thinnest of excuses for what he does. He claims "it is just a laugh" but only really once does he even get close to making a solid argument; Yapp doesn't push it though and it did rather make me wish that he had stayed behind the camera and continued to let Theroux do the probing because I suggest he could have done more. This is not to say that he gets nothing from the experience, because it is interesting as a character profile, but I really could have done with fewer scenes of him performing and more time with the man himself observing him and chatting to him. One major trick that was either forbidden or missed was that Yapp barely touches with the people that Veasey appeals to.
It is here that the point was to be made and it was here that Yapp could have confronted Veasey with something more substantial to discuss. It might be "a laugh" to Veasey but Yapp is correct when he points out that when the racist material comes out, the audience tend to cheer more than they laugh and the difference in this reaction is obvious and telling. He makes this point himself but personally I would have liked him to get down around the audience before and after the who and spent time chatting till he got something that he could use (although I appreciate the mostly drunken audience might have meant that that would have taken ages).
Overall then an interesting affair but it doesn't probe and explore anywhere near as much as I wanted it to. Yapp gets a great subject but he doesn't manage to get the most from it and sadly yet again he does rather show himself to be a few notches below what I would have expected from Theroux. Veasey is a very intriguing character though and the film is carried by how he is both pleasant and offensive by turns. Still though for what it does it is hard not to see it as being loaded with missed potential.
Shown on Channel 4 in a late night slot and screened with warnings before the film and in each and every commercial break, this film is certainly not one that you should watch if you are upset by rough language or coarse humour. Indeed this is pretty much the reason for the film because Yapp seems keen to explore the character of Veasey (Brown) in the style that he once did with Louis Theroux. It is understandable then that Yapp shares this style but just a shame that he has struggled to really escape the shadow of Theroux whether it be with this film or with the earlier film with Bruce Forsyth. Here he gets a great subject but doesn't really manage to do a great deal with it as a director, instead the film is really made by "Chubby" himself when he lets his guard down.
As a casual viewer who has never seen more than a clip of the man, you almost want him to be a total racist and monster but he really isn't. Instead what you get is a reasonably self-effacing character at times who never pretends to be more than a Blackpool stand-up who plays to small crowds of drunks. Using this version of him as the base, the film becomes interesting as this is contrasted with some of the racist things that he comes out with as part of his normal life some of it is like his stand-up and it is extremely racist, no matter what he says. Yapp doesn't make the most of this.
We do see Veasey discuss his views but he gets away with the weakest logic and thinnest of excuses for what he does. He claims "it is just a laugh" but only really once does he even get close to making a solid argument; Yapp doesn't push it though and it did rather make me wish that he had stayed behind the camera and continued to let Theroux do the probing because I suggest he could have done more. This is not to say that he gets nothing from the experience, because it is interesting as a character profile, but I really could have done with fewer scenes of him performing and more time with the man himself observing him and chatting to him. One major trick that was either forbidden or missed was that Yapp barely touches with the people that Veasey appeals to.
It is here that the point was to be made and it was here that Yapp could have confronted Veasey with something more substantial to discuss. It might be "a laugh" to Veasey but Yapp is correct when he points out that when the racist material comes out, the audience tend to cheer more than they laugh and the difference in this reaction is obvious and telling. He makes this point himself but personally I would have liked him to get down around the audience before and after the who and spent time chatting till he got something that he could use (although I appreciate the mostly drunken audience might have meant that that would have taken ages).
Overall then an interesting affair but it doesn't probe and explore anywhere near as much as I wanted it to. Yapp gets a great subject but he doesn't manage to get the most from it and sadly yet again he does rather show himself to be a few notches below what I would have expected from Theroux. Veasey is a very intriguing character though and the film is carried by how he is both pleasant and offensive by turns. Still though for what it does it is hard not to see it as being loaded with missed potential.
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- bob the moo
- Jun 4, 2007
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- Runtime50 minutes
- Color
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Top Gap
What was the official certification given to Roy Chubby Brown: Britain's Rudest Comedian (2007) in the United Kingdom?
Answer