Eaten by Lions

Eaten by Lions tries too hard to be a northern feel good low budget farcical comedy.

When their parents were eaten by lions on a trip to Africa. Half brothers Omar (Antonio Aakeel) and Pete (Jack Carroll) were raised by their grandmother. After it was made clear the boys aunt did not want the asian Omar, but the disabled Pete would be reluctantly taken in as he was white.

Now teenagers the boys are on the verge of being split up again after the death of their grandmother. The aunt makes it clear that Omar is not welcome.

They leave Bradford and head to Blackpool to find Omar's real father. Only to find that dad Irfan (Asim Chaudhry) is a man child himself.

Omar tries to fit in with Irfan's extended family. Pete tries to fight off the advances of Irfan's mute relative.

There is a little bit of everything from other movies here. Steve Martin's The Jerk to the Schwarzenegger and Devito comedy vehicle Twins. The flirty relative was straight out of My Beautiful Launderette. The horrid aunt might as well be the Dursleys from Harry Potter.

Populated by eccentric characters, Johnny Vegas playing the slightly lewd Uncle Ray (another variant of Uncle Monty from Withnail and I.) It tried to be funny but rarely made me laugh.

It was a scattergun script, when the movie would had been better to let have fewer characters and let them develop.

Although a low budget film, the Blackpool scenes were well photographed.

I wasn't sure about this film to begin with but it was really good. The story is very good but it's the laughs that really make it great. The cameos are perfect, Johnny Vegas perfect. We all laughed out loud at points. Don't read the bad reviews just watch it yourself :)

A lovely, charming movie that will make you feel good. The title itself may be disturbing at first glance, but the movie is fun to watch, comic at points, never dull. So, grab some popcorn, sit back and enjoy the show. Esentially it is a story about belonging and acceptance, which every one of us strives to have. Overall, a very nice movie.

What do you do if your short film hits a nerve and takes off? Well, go turn it into a full feature film , best with as many of the lead actors as you can. That, in a way, is the DNA of Eaten by Lions. Has director Jason Wingard, who also co-wrote the script, bitten off a bit more than he can chew in taking this leap? That would be too facile a verdict to cast, and only possible if you approached his creation with any other than a taste for daringly independent film making.

But it's worth sticking with this film and its cast, a good few of them growing into it from the short. Technical set pieces, paying homage to static frames and canvasses. A selection of pastiches riffing on second and third generation British Indian culture and its in-jokes and contradictions. Half-brotherly love, shaped by a dynamic also rooted in an implicit reflection on and of disability. Racism, cutting both ways, playfully mocked throughout.

But ultimately, a coming of age story where opposites meet, then mesh, difference is overcome, prejudice cast away, culminating in a wild house party and its sober aftermath, none of which intended at all to resemble an even marginally plausible unfolding of events.

Eaten by Lions ultimately therefore turns into an homage to transgression, muted to remain within the bounds of tolerance of the common viewer's taste buds.

Despite the low budget, the team behind this made a good quality and fun film. I've seen a few lower budget movies in my time and most seem to have that rough edge finish to them but this is nicely polished. The only thing I can fault it with is slightly stale acting but looking past that, it's a good little movie.