An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn review: Crazy comedy for the Channel 4 generation.
An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn review by Freda Cooper.
An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn review
Beverly Luff who? We’re promised an evening with him, a magical one even, so he must be somebody special. A magician, maybe? As it turns out, he doesn’t have a magic wand, but in the past he’s cast something of a spell over Lulu Danger (Aubrey Plaza) and she’s never got over it.
In An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn, the latest from the ever so slightly warped imagination of Jim Hosking, we don’t uncover that crucial little nugget for some time. Initially, it looks like we’re thrust into a crazy crime caper, involving Lulu’s husband Shane (Emile Hirsch channeling his inner Jack Black), who manages the local coffee chain store but robs the nearby grocery store. So the owner tries to get the money back, employing wannabe hitman Colin (Jemaine Clement). He, in turn, develops a passion for the said Lulu and finds himself up against her past in the substantial shape of Luff Linn (Craig Robinson). Let’s leave it there because the plot is pretty much what you’d expect from Hosking – tangled to the point of crazy.
The good news is that it’s also funny. The not so good news is that it won’t be for everybody. Hosking, after all, is an acquired taste. In a sense, this is a comedy for the Channel 4 generation. Not only does it have Film Four backing, but its style calls to mind the likes of The Mighty Boosh and the cast includes not just Clement from The Flight Of The Conchords but also Toast Of London’s Matt Berry as Luff Linn’s partner. And, just for good measure, there’s Plaza and Hirsch. It’s a world populated by grotesques, from the coffee shop to the run-down hotel where Beverly is about to give his one night only performance. You have to see them to believe them, and some are more entertaining than others, but the hotel has a bizarre DJ rejoicing in the name of DJ Valerie Grillz and hotel receptionist Lawrence Doggi (Jacob Wysocki) is a man mountain with a curious interpretation of customer service – and an even stranger haircut.
Hosking’s previous offering was The Greasy Strangler, a Marmite movie if ever there was one. This is more accessible but it will still divide audiences, comedy being a personal thing. There are, however, times when it is laugh out loud funny, the best of the comedy being saved until Luff Linn’s one night show. The better-known members of the cast make it all worth watching, especially the Clement-Plaza combo, which has a real touch of magic. Clement, in particular, pulls off the neat trick of infusing his outlandish character with some real pathos and there are times when he’s genuinely touching.
Would you want a second evening with Luff Linn? Probably not. Yes, it’s funny, but not often enough: it sags more often than it should and the laughs fizzle out towards the end. Which makes it rather like its namesake – for one nightly. Not necessarily magical, but good fun. And bonkers. If you like that sort of thing.
An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn review by Freda Cooper, June 2018.
An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn was reviewed at the 2018 Sundance London film festival.
