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All Together, The

4/10

Stars: Martin Freeman, Amanda Abbington, Danny Dyer, Velibor Topic, Richard Harrington, Corey Johnson

Director: Gavin Claxton

Those looking forward to seeing Danny Dyer, the hard man of British films, in something different may be disappointed here. Even though this is a farce, Dyer's once again cast as a hard-cursing gangster, gunned down in the end in a bucket of blood.

It's a comedy then? Well, the first 10 minutres is pretty funny, as TV producer Freeman despairs of 'artistic' Polish flatmate Topic and his 'animal art', in which stuffed ferrets, weasels, cats and squirrels do quite unspeakable things to each other. 'I chased a deer,' the Pole explains, 'but found it was a man on a bike'.

Unfortunately, such surrealist humour all but vanishes when the film splits into two. Freeman fights to cope with a big-headed TV star (Harrington), while Topic (their flat is for sale) lets in, first, estate agents, then a pair of big-time hoodlums - Dyer and his American contact (Johnson), who has eaten bad curry and flees to the loo - followed by more estate agents and then Jehovah's Witnesses, until the flat's more crowded than the Marx Brothers' cabin in A Night at the Opera, as the stranded mobsters hold everyone hostage.

Lots of shouting, swearing, vomiting and rushes to the loo ensue
- this movie could truly claim to major in toilet humour - until all the film's characters are in the flat and the whole unstable mixture explodes.

After the first 10 minutes, wit, invention and the spark of inspiration are nowhere in sight as we, like the hostages, suffer a gruesome ordeal.

Alan Frank

UK 2006. UK Distributor: Lionsgate. Eastman Colour.
83 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 1, Drugs 0, Swearing 3.

Review date: 06 May 2007