Greed

Steve Coogan gives a great performance as ever, but the rest of the film didn't quite hold it together.

The message Winterbottom was trying to engage the audience with became too preachy, particularly the end montage of statistics aimed at shaming the fashion industry and its use of sweatshop labour. This was wholly unnecessary as the story made this point without this tacked on piece of activism.

The CGI lion was also disappointing, as was the general direction of the story, and many of the characters felt under-developed and derivative.

It was all a bit too obvious, and very simplistic in its outlook.

We all know that the very wealthy and powerful mostly made that wealth through ruthlessness, this is an old, tired narrative now.

Yes Steve Coogan is in this film but people need to just stop assuming it's going to be a comedy. Read all the negative reviews and they all complain about this not being a comedy.

It's not supposed to be a comedy. It's a mockumentary holding a mirror up to society allowing the rich to dodge tax and hire almost slave labour to sustain their empires, with people happily buying slave made products.

I went into this film without knowing anything about it and was pleasantly surprised.

So ignore the people moaning that this isn't a comedy and just watch it for what it actually it.

What kind of film is this supposed to be? A comedy? A polemic? A social satire? An expose? It seems to be trying to be all of these simultaneously - and the result is something of a mess.

Steve Coogan is good as a loathsome tycoon who doesn't care who he tramples underfoot as he amasses his fortune. David Mitchell is also good as his bumbling would-be biographer; and the preparations for Coogan's hedonistic birthday bash contain some fine comedy.

But the film also wants to condemn the way the fashion industry is built on the exploitation of workers in Sri Lanka and elsewhere (and everyone who has ever bought clothes in their local High St is complicit in this exploitation). This is a theme worthy of treatment, but to attempt to splice it with the comedic strand of the film jars dreadfully.

The plight of refugees crossing the Mediterranean is also touched upon. Again, this is something we should all be concerned about, but it can hardly be blamed on retail fashion moguls - so why try to shoehorn it into this film?

And as if there wasn't too much in the film already, we also get the filming of some sort of reality TV programme, the relationship of which to the main plot is far from clear.

They say that less is more. In the case of this film, more is less.

Winterbottom's stuff is always interesting but unfortunately this one fell at some obvious hurdles. For two thirds it was an effective satire with some good performances (Coogan, as ever, a hoot) and some funny lines but in the final furlong any semblance of subtlety was dropped for silly plot developments and cheap sentiment, bashing the audience over the head with a point that had already been well made. A shame.

The overall message of the film about the fashion industry and its cheap overseas workforce is interesting. But as a comedy it didn't work for me.

If you like Coogan you're better off rewatching some of his other films or the series with Rob Brydon.

And waiting until this hits the TV / streaming services.