Breaking the Bank

A glance at the cast list of Breaking the Bank raises expectations. There's a huge amount of comic talent here, but good actors need a good script, and they don't have one. Plot and characterisation are hackneyed. Pearce Quigley's turn as a wise homeless man is a particularly unwelcome cliche, and Mathew Horne's investment banker is as one-note as an electric drill. If Vadim Jean wanted to make a comedy that exposed the absurdity and irresponsibility that led to to financial crisis of 2008, there was merit in the idea and a big target to aim at. Unfortunately he missed it by a mile. Good actors are often reduced to trotting out well-worn one-liners that might have come straight from a Google search for jokes for a best man to make at a wedding. Just as disappointingly, the expositional dialogue designed to show us the workings of the financial world sounds as if it was lifted from Wikipedia. Vadim Jean remains a talented director but on this evidence he's lost his ear for dialogue. Three stars for a cast that work hard and do their best with terrible material.

I suspect all the negative reviews are by those who simply can't appreciate or comprehend how the city and its traders operate - and machinations of the goings on as exemplified this movie. This movie shows the city workings pretty well... albeit with some exaggeration. It was clever and it was quite believable... it showed exactly how companies prosper and fail because those that hold the stock, whether owners or short term traders can make or break a company.

After all his years on 'Cheers' and 'Frasier' you'd think that Kelsey Grammar would know a good script from a bad one. Obviously not because he has popped up in this poor film, that after a very brief cinema outing has gone straight to DVD here in the UK.

And quite rightly so. Grammar may be the best thing in it by a mile, but come on, this is as weak as it gets. The plot is daft, the jokes silly - I think I lasted about half an hour and then gave up.

What is quite funny though is the 'making of' documentary, in which the writer and producer seem to be of the belief that they've come up with a British comedy that will rival the output of Richard Curtis and the Ealing comedies of days gone by. Sorry fellas, you weren't even close.

I can see why Grammar wants to make it on the big screen, but this isn't the film in which he'll do it.

Kelsey Grammar is, to my mind, a genius of a comic actor. This is based , of course, on his bravura performance on what was possibly the best ever sitcom - Frasier. However he just does not seem to work on the big screen. Breaking the Bank is awful in almost every respect. The combination of American and English humour just does not work. The cast of the movie are seasoned performers with good work in their CV's but this film is not a good addition to them. Tamsin Grieg, Matthew Horne can be great but seem to be phoning it in here. Kelsey Grammar is the best thing in the film but with such a lousy script he is given little chance to show what he can do. Kelsey seems bound to be tied to the small screen - Cheers, Frasier and Boss were all successful ventures - Frasier is legendary, but his large screen outings seem all to have been failures, apart from his Toy Story voiceovers.

Sorry to say, I found this movie to be a terribly lame comedy, which didn't work for me on any level.

Kelsey Grammar stars as Charles Bunbury, a dullard of a bank chairman, whose wife Penelope (Tamsin Greig) is the principal shareholder of the 200-year-old venerable institution, and whose family has passed down control of the bank from one generation to the next.

When Charles is set-up to pour an enormous amount of the bank's and Penelope's money into a worthless investment, it will set off a chain of events that will lead to ruination for many. I won't bore you the rest of the plot details other than to say they get more and more absurd and nonsensical. For me, it became a slog to watch it to the end, all the way to its predictable conclusion.

Overall, I thought the comedic elements in this film just fell "flat as a pancake", and I would suggest trying something else.