Greed

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.

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.

Some great performances, always great for me to watch Steve Coogan. he plays this so well. Isla Fischer is also worth a mention.

This is entertaining, funny but poignat in places. Thought provoking with a message throughout. Capitalism and the wealth divide.

Well worth a watch.

It's a pity that this ends with a slide-show of factoids apparently intended to give the issues raised by the film a 'men vs women' or 'third world vs first' slant. Actually, what the all-too-true-to-life story is about is money vs no money: the fact that most of it is scooped up by a few arrogant, entitled, savvy people, and the rest of us - men as much as women, west as much as east - are at their mercy. Haven't we just recently seen the way our former public water utilities have been given the Philip Green treatment by unscrupulous capitalists, 'leveraged' for billions while our rivers are choked with sewage? And similarly, there's a moment of moral clarity about how the amoral 'Green' fails to recognise the moral freight of what he does - 'in his mind, all he does is offer a price' - but the same does not extend to some 'good guy' characters whose actions are simply indefensible.

There's a pinch of amusement here, and a peck of anger, but none of it will have any effect on the Philip Greens of this world. They are too stupid and arrogant to be hurt by satire and, whatever devastation they wreak on others, they somehow always come out on top. Realising that, you can only come away depressed.