Mixed reaction to Ant and Dec movie
TV duo Ant and Dec have seen their first outing on the silver screen panned by some reviewers as “utterly dismal” but lauded by others as “engaging”.
The kings of TV entertainment star in Alien Autopsy, a comedy based on a true story.
They play best friends Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, UFO enthusiasts who convinced the world 10 years ago that they had film of a real-life UFO autopsy.
But The Times panned the film, released tomorrow, calling it “an utterly dismal attempt to craft a post-modern spoof out of a 60-year-old hoax”.
It continued: “The director, Jonny Campbell, applies the kiss of death to this dire nonsense by casting a couple of real aliens (And and Dec) in the charm-free roles.”
The BBC website was equally unimpressed: “Too banal for adults, too gruesome for kids, Jonny Campbell’s film delivers some queasy laughs but ultimately proves as stiff as the titular ET.”
It added it “will probably lose them more fans than it gains”.
The Evening Standard in London joined in the criticism. Under the headline “Ant and Dec’s close encounters of the turgid kind”, it said much of the film “just isn’t funny enough”.
Luckily for the Geordie duo, The News of the World enjoyed it more, saying the pair did “an okay job”, and decided it was “worth missing that Saturday night takeaway to go and see it”.
The People thought the outing “an engaging little tale”, adding: “Not quite a comedy, not quite a true-life story, not quite a thriller, Alien Autopsy manages a bit of everything.”
Scotland’s Sunday Mail decided they “actually show great promise” and the film was “well worth watching”.
But, love it or hate it, the pair are unlikely to devote themselves to becoming full-time Hollywood stars.
Dec said at the premiere in Leicester Square: “We’ve been really looking forward to tonight. This might be the only movie we ever make, the only premiere we ever have, so we just decided to enjoy it.
“We’re signed to ITV to 2007 so certainly until the end of then we’ll still be working on our TV projects.
“We wanted to see how this went and if viewers can think of us as these characters.
“If things come in, then we’ll look at them but we’re certainly not going to launch an assault on Tinseltown.”
