"Absolutely Fabulous" Is Old and Out of Touch

Most TV-to-film projects hawk the comforts of a destination wedding—catch up with old friends, glimpse heretofore hidden depths, embrace the most flattering elements of maturation—but the cinematic expansion of Absolutely Fabulous is grittier.

For fans of the old BBC series, the further adventures of buffoonish publicist Edina Monsoon (Jennifer Saunders) and perma-soused fashion editrix Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley) shouldn't seem all that different from a favored punk band's reunion tour. You expect sloppy retreads of past anthems and a touch of the grotesque, but a few hours spent with wastrels fighting irrelevance promises a few giggles. Aging poorly was always the point.

As Edina flounces around her normcore daughter Saffron (Julia Sawalha), dismissive "Mother" (June Whitfield) and assistant Bubble (Jane Horrocks), little seems changed at first. The interfamilial barbs still sting, and while Hollywood's relaxed attitudes toward drugs and drinking might blunt the impact of Edina's debauchery, the film's fat-shaming, transgender-mocking, racially insensitive gags still hit. As the film shifts to its office setting, though, there's a sense of spoilage. The lone good laugh—Edina's memoirs are 300 pages of "BLAH BLAH BLAH"—is subsumed by overlong physical humor and an awkward appearance by Graham Norton, looking like he happened to be walking by when the cameras turned on.

Clumsy slapstick and extraneous cameos were always AbFab hallmarks, but the film version lingers cruelly on slower stretches. It literally magnifies the inabilities of Britcom director Mandie Fletcher to stage set pieces, and sketch queen Saunders to craft a proper screenplay.

The fashion-backward wardrobes and attitudes are no help. What PR whiz tries to revive her flagging brand through publishing? When searching for a star client, why target Kate Moss? Who are Emma Bunton and Lulu anyway? Hasn't plot exposition via TV news clips gone the way of spinning headlines?

Stylistic ruts happen to all women of a certain vintage (Saunders is 58; Lumley, somehow, 70), but neither seem to have aged in the slightest. If anything, Edina now appears younger than her daughter, which adds yet another layer of dysfunction to their banter. Set amid Clinton-era aesthetics, passing mentions of social media and modern-day stars feel bizarrely anachronistic. The British cultural references, which were always obscure for stateside audiences, now seem like a parody of a celebrity world where no one (besides Jon Hamm) is famous and nothing (save Hamm) is attractive.

Lacking any connection to the surrounding culture or satirical intent, we're left with just a pair of rapacious, self-centered monsters seeking fun. Strangely, that's almost enough. Freed from the requirements of plot or pleasing fans, their batshit efforts to afford a retirement on the French Riviera finally hit a successful comic rhythm as the film ends. There is, after all, a cinematic tradition in pairing squat, infantile characters with lanky, borderline-sociopathic ones as lifemates. Do we expect cogent critiques of militarism from Abbott and Costello or Laurel and Hardy? Like all great comedy duos, Pats and Edina escape the moral consequences of unforgivable actions, and we relish their solipsism. They know what they're doing. They just utterly, wholly, with an apathy to blot out the stars, do not care. They're still larger than life. It's the tweets that grew small.

Critic's Grade: C

See it: Absolutely Fabulous is rated R. It opens Friday, July 22.

Willamette Week