Mindhorn ** (2016, Julian Barratt, David Schofield, Andrea Riseborough, Russell Tovey, Harriet Walter, Steve Coogan) – Movie Review

Julian Barratt works hard to raise laughs in this relentlessly silly spoof comedy as a has-been actor, Richard Thorncroft, who in his glory days once played Detective Mindhorn in a Bergerac-style Eighties TV detective series.

Now living in Walthamstow and reduced to appearing in scummy adverts, he is enrolled to help Isle of Man Chief Inspector Derek Newsome (David Schofield) and DC Baines (Andrea Riseborough) find a crazy serial killer who will only speak to Detective Mindhorn, who he thinks is real.

It’s a one-joke movie, and that joke is only mildly amusing, at best a half hour TV show. That good actor Russell Tovey is outside his comfort zone and pretty terrible as Paul Melly. Riseborough and Schofield are not naturally funny people on this evidence either, and nor is Harriet Walter as Mindhorn’s agent. And, weirdly, Kenneth Branagh and Simon Callow are not at all good as Kenneth Branagh and Simon Callow.

But the dry and sarcastic Barratt is unstoppably exuberant, believing in his own every wacky tick and daft comic nuance, Steve Coogan is amusing as Peter Eastman, and director Sean Foley keeps it pretty zesty.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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