Mad Cows

A couple of weeks ago I had a get together with a bunch of Matt Johnson ( Aka The The ) fans down in London and a couple of people I'd met there , namely Duncan and Ange , had like me attended film school . As in these type of situations the topic of conversation soon got round to lamenting the demise of the British film industry . It may sound bitter but we all agreed that the reason was because the industry in this country is crippled by nepotism with people getting their movies financed simply because they know the right people , not because they have any obvious talent

MAD COWS is a case in point . Apparently it's based on a novel by Australian Kathy Lette which probably explains how her husband Geoffry Robertson managed to get a walk on part in this movie . Robertson isn't a professional actor which means a member of Equity has been deprived of an income . Actually at least one other actor has also been deprived since Mohamed Al Fayed the owner of Harrods also appears in a walk on part . As for the actors who have paid their dues to Equity I wasn't impressed . Anna Friel spends the movie with an entirely unconvincing Aussie accent while Joanna Lumley is abysmal since she recreates her role as Patsy Stone from ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS

The supporting cast I will reserve judgement on because I've a feeling that the director Sara Sugarman is more to blame than the actors themselves . A case in point is an interrogation by a detective who has arrested the heroine for stealing a packet of frozen peas ( A pathetic plot twist ? Glad you agree with me ) and my gut instinct is that the scene was hopelessly unfunny to begin with but instead of the director beating the screenwriter to death with a limp script Ms Sugarman has told the actor in question to put on a funny speech impediment and other clown mannerisms . No doubt the cast have nothing but kind words about working with Sara Sugerman but you don't make a movie to enjoy yourself - You make a movie to let the audience enjoy themself and there's no enjoyment here as we have to endure silly performances , MTV style direction in a very plot less and episodic story that is a kick in the guts to anyone who has struggled to make it in the movie business in this country

But at least MAD COWS proves once and for all that it's not what you know in the British movie industry - It's who you know

As a big fan of Kathy Lette's early novels, I was so pleased when I heard they were making this into a film. I now hold my hands up and say I really should be shot for not knowing any better!! This film is an absolute stinker. It is jumpy, makes zero sense and has managed to cut all the good stuff out of the book and just leave the crappy bits. The book verges on the ridiculous but always retains its humour - this film doesn't. I can't quite pinpoint what it is I hate so much about it. Actually, yes I can - everything. It's totally ruined the book for me. I've read it since and could not erase the image of a truly terrible performance from Anna 'Beth Jordache' Friel as Maddy. Give this a wide berth.

Just what is it about Joanna Lumley and the cinema? Joanna is one of Britain's most popular television actresses, and is widely admired for her beauty (even in her sixties), her graciousness and her humanitarian and charitable work, yet whenever her agent sends her a film script her judgement seems to desert her completely. There have been occasional exceptions, such as her cameo in the excellent "Shirley Valentine", but too often the presence of J-Lum's name in the cast list of a feature film serves as a warning that it will be a turkey of massive proportions. Her first credited role was as a Bond Girl in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", possibly the worst-ever Bond film, and since then she has graced some of the worst British movies of the last forty years, such as "Don't Just Lie There, Say Something", "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" and the awesomely bad "Prince Valiant". The Michael Winner satire "Parting Shots" had some points of interest and was certainly not as bad as the above-mentioned, films, but even there Joanna, miscast as a Cockney barmaid, was not at her best.

"Mad Cows" is another example of Joanna's talent for choosing the least distinguished vehicles in which to display her talents. It appeared in the same year (1999) as "Parting Shots" and, like that film, has ambitions to satirise the state of British society in the late nineties. The main character, Maddie Wolfe, is a young Australian single mother living in London, and the film follows Maddie's misadventures after she is arrested for shoplifting a bag of frozen peas. While she is being held on remand in prison, a demented psychiatrist tricks her into signing a form giving her young son up for adoption. Much of the rest of the plot is concerned with Maddie's attempts, occasionally assisted by her friend Gillian, to save the boy from this fate.

I have never read Kathy Lette's original novel, or for that matter any of her books, but I cannot say that the film acts as a good advertisement for her works, although Lette herself presumably approved of it as she agreed to make a cameo appearance. A number of other celebrities do the same, including Lette's husband the lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, the model Naomi Campbell and Mohammed Al-Fayed, who appears as a doorman at Harrods. (At the time the film was made he was the owner of the store).

The film has two main problems. The first is that director Sara Sugarman seems to have encouraged her entire cast to overact frantically. Maddie is played by Anna Friel, regarded as something of a rising star in the nineties, largely on the strength of her controversial lesbian kiss in "Brookside". (Today, of course, gay and lesbian plot lines are commonplace in soap operas, but twenty years ago they were still regarded as shocking). I will leave comment on the Lancashire-born Friel's Aussie accent to the Australians themselves, but her character comes across as strident, brazen and surprisingly unsympathetic for someone who is supposed to be the heroine of the film.

Lumley's character Gillian is even less sympathetic, even though she is supposed to be the heroine's best friend. She is played as a sort of upper-class Sloane Ranger down on her luck, desperately in need of money and prepared to do anything, including prostituting herself or blackmail, in order to get it. Lumley overacts just as frantically as Friel, but the worst offender in this regard is the late Anna Massey as Dwina Phelps, a psychiatrist far madder than any of the patients she treats. Greg Wise is better as Maddie's useless upper-class ex-boyfriend Alex, although he makes Alex so convincingly caddish that we never understand just why Maddie keeps returning to him. (Every time she does so, of course, he manages to alienate her again by revealing himself to be even more of a selfish bastard than she had previously realised).

The film's other main problem is that its satire, whether directed against the police, the criminal justice system, the psychiatric profession or politicians, is so exaggerated as to be ineffective. Some of the issues involved may be real social problems- adoption agencies pressurising working-class mothers to give up their children to childless middle-class families, political corruption, police officers bullying suspects accused of minor crimes- but the film addresses these issues in such crude, heavy-handed terms that it can make no contribution to the debate, not even on a comic level.

"Parting Shots" was occasionally guilty of the same fault, and it had other faults such as the miscasting of the wooden Chris Rea in the leading role, but at least it partly succeeded in its aim of holding up a satirical distorting mirror to Blair's Britain of the late nineties. "Mad Cows", by contrast, does not succeed in any of its aims, unless we can assume that Sugarman deliberately set out to make one of the worst British films of the decade. 3/10

This is a great film, with lots of funny and moving moments. The production values are high considering it was so low budget and I would highly recommend it on video if you didn't catch it at the cinema......

...no really they did - not just because this film was so awful, but you simply never know! To take some of the UK's finest character actors, take one of the funniest antidotes to 'chick-lit shopping novels' I've ever read to produce this steaming pile of 'god-awfulness' beggars belief. Okay, so casting 'talent Dyson' Anna Friel wasn't the greatest idea ever but Joanna Lumley and Greg Wise couldn't even carry it on their (absolutely!) fabulous shoulders. These types of movie are one of the reasons that the UK film industry is still flagging ('cough...nepotism...ahem). The director tried some bold moves and techniques but poor Anna just wasn't worthy of them. My partner still hasn't forgiven me for taking him to this, do you know how many Arnie / Bruce / zombie films I had to (uncomplainingly) sit through as penance? The book is outstanding, her best ever, if you are thinking of renting this movie I urge you to buy a book instead - and if you're not a big reader then you could stick pins in your legs as you watch it, it may help you stay awake.