Reviews

I must confess I was completely ignorant of this historical episode, and had the uncharitable thought it might be severely exaggerated, but no, a bit of fact-checking courtesy of the disinformation superhighway reveals that if anything they played it down.

The new bride was in fact sacked from her job with Lloyd's of London when she refused to obey orders from the government.

And the marriage we see in the film at the local registry office was actually their second attempt, after the priest who had his church set up to marry the two of them had a call from his bishop on the morning of the day it was to take place, ordering him not to perform the ceremony.

Perhaps those scenes will be in the outtakes on the DVD!

I can't believe anyone thinks this "documentary" was legit!

Apart from the fact that nobody could be that narcissistic, or could be that unattractive and yet apparently attract a number of very attractive women (at least until they find out what a total loser he is, as if that wouldn't be obvious from his appearance), the film contains a number of pretty obvious clues.

For starters, there's the scene where his psych-nurse ex-girlfriend mentions his "mental issues", reminding him (when he seems to find this a surprise) that he used to be completely convinced he was really Jesus. If you were scripting a cliché of a mental patient in the kind of institution where she might have worked, could you have come up with anything more archetypal?

And can anyone really believe the attractive new girl he goes out with on their first date complete with camera crew (or at least digital video camera), would be so turned on by his unbelievably crass and dull conversation as to accompany him and his camera back to his pigsty of a flat and then have sex with him and his camera?

Then there's the scene where he overdoses on no less than seven Viagra tablets (enough to put him in intensive care – look it up on Google) and then, only mildly incapacitated by his supposedly-massive erection, runs around the streets clumsily propositioning multiple women, including one who ends up being his new girlfriend.

Then there's the phone call, ostensibly with the producer of the film, where said producer gives him a bollocking and tells him to stop making the film he is making and make something else, but he goes on making the same film. As if that refusal to follow instructions from the man putting up the money wasn't unbelievable enough, the same producer has apparently allowed this recording to be used in the final version of the "documentary".

And I won't even mention the dungeon scene with the S&M mistress, especially in a British "documentary".

As a parody of documentary style it's just not that funny, perhaps because the target has already been savaged so effectively by such great mockumentaries as This Is Spinal Tap, or even by such current TV shows as Modern Family. I guess it gets marks for having fooled so many people, including just about every reviewer on this Board, and for that massive boom mike he carries with him everywhere, the visual equivalent of Spinal Tap's turning the amplifier up to 11.