ChorleyRobbie

Daphne is a timeless British film. By which I mean it could have pretty much been made at any time in the last 50 years, and be just as 'meh.' It's one of those films that turns up on the telly and you look at the fashion and the streets but wonder why you're actually watching. It's a slight tale of a rather unlikable lonely girl who doesn't really know what to do with her life. Emily Beecham gives a believable performance but with a male writer and male director it is ultimately a bloke's fantasy idea of a 20something single girl about town. Everyone spouts their arch clever philosophies but anything that happens to Daphne doesn't really seem to affect her. That said, she's probably hardened by all those ghosts she used to hunt (which has clearly had an effect) and I applaud the film-maker's willingness to hold back Fred, Shaggy and Velma until the sequel.

Scottish musician Edwyn Collins is best known (if at all) for his hits "Rip It Up And Start Again" (with Orange Juice) and "A Girl Like You" which became a worldwide smash in 1994. Despite only having the two hits he was a constant presence in the UK music industry and his witty and opinionated views made him a radio regular. It was after an appearance with Andrew Collins on BBC6Music that he suffered a brain hemorrhage and entered into a coma. This film charts his recovery, his relationship with his partner, and his attempts to make new music.

The problem is it's hard to see who it will appeal to: the film is far too wishy-washy and fails to pin down it's subject. While we watch atmospheric visuals and listen to amazing sound design we drift merely around the edges of the man himself, who barely appears for an hour.

If you've never heard of the man, there is no context. Nothing to say why you should care, and barely anything to show what he was like before the coma. A few brief clips from "Conan O'Brien" and "Top of the Pops" aside, the film remains stubbornly in the etherworld of Collins' coma.

The first hour is dreary, insubstantial indulgence by the film-makers. The last 20 minutes goes some way to redeeming itself by showing more of Edwin at work and with Grace, but the whole thing is lacking. It needed more voices, more history. You learn much more, and are moved more, by the BBC Radio 4 programme "Mastertapes" that features in this film and can still be heard on the Radio 4 website.

I'm a big fan of the Pythons but before watching this pretty much all I knew about Graham Chapman's life was that he was an alcoholic and gay. Sadly, after watching the film, that still seems to be pretty much all there was to him.

A series of animation teams take us through Chapman's life from birth to death and with varying degrees of success, all with Chapman's narration. The visuals are mostly good and help to keep interest but anyone looking for insight will be disappointed. A self-indulgent sequence about Chapman's drinking withdrawal covers well-trodden ground and the repeated jokes about penises and ejaculation soon wear thin. OK, he was gay - we get it! The directors make the mistake of trying to be Pythonesque but nearly all the gags fall flat, while the storytelling gets lost and the timeline muddled. Chapman was a great performer and writer, but you wouldn't know it from this, which moves his art largely to 3rd place behind alcohol and being gay. A writing trip with Cleese seems happy to say Cleese did all the hard work on their projects while the sort of roles that gave Chapman the Hollywood lifestyle are brushed over.

Perhaps a better approach would have been to include archive footage and new materials, to explain things and provide context and perspective. Ultimately, this is just an unsatisfying film from some well-meaning Python fanboys.