Sex Lives of the Potato Men

I saw this at the cinema when it came out and had no idea it had been mauled by the critics. I laughed as much as I ever have done at a film and plenty others there seemed to find it just as funny. There are some great lines in the script and excellent performances from Mark Gatiss, Mackenzie Crook and (in some ways) Johnny Vegas.

The attacks on the film have been ridiculous. It is not smutty. It is not a revival of Carry on or the Confessions series. It has nothing in it for teenage onanists. Every other movie coming out of Hollywood these days spends half its time ogling its stars in lingering close up. Potato Men does not contain a single scene like that, nor was anyone cast as eye candy. Quite the opposite...

It shows a coarse, poor, bleak life in a coarse, bleak, but humorous way and does not try and convince anyone that we are watching the Salt of the Earth. It was probably that element that shocked the reviewers. Well received British movies like The Full Monty and Billy Elliot seem self- conscious about this issue. It is as though we have to be packaged for an imaginary American audience, who might otherwise have us down for horse riding snobs.

I am not claiming it to be a masterpiece. It has some weak elements that can be attributed mainly to the episodic plot and a low budget. There is a review here from trinitybay9 that sums it up very well. There are four sections and the one concerning Tolly is quite poor. There are some excellent comedy performances in the film but Dominic Coleman's is not one of them.

The real shame though is that the director is never likely to make another film. With the honourable exception of Johnny Vegas, even the cast responded gutlessly to the bad press. It is easily the best thing Mackenzie Crook has done since The Office, but he seems to consider it to be, artistically, a black mark on a CV that contains the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

Being a girl this is the sort of film that I was warned about watching, but being an open minded individual I decided to give it a go.

I hate to say it but I found Johnny Vegas' acting not overly great, however Mackenzie Crook was very good, very believable character (I loved him in the office and I was worried that I would be put off by his acting ability in this film, but I was pleasantly surprised!)

This film shows a humorous side to kinky areas of sex that some people get up to which I found really funny, and quite a lot of it true !! Some people are very weird in the bedroom!

There's not really a detailed plot line, but judging on the title of the film I didn't hold out much hope :)so i wasn't disappointed!

Watching Sex Lives of the Potato Men is kind of like consuming 12 pints of lager, watching The Word, eating a cold pizza, abusing yourself to Page 3 and waking up in a puddle of your own sick. You know you shouldn't enjoy it. You should be deeply ashamed. But somehow you can't help but look back and grin.

There's no doubt about it. Sex Lives of the Potato Men is badly written, poorly directed and does nothing to further British cinema, but if quality were determined by how many knob and fanny jokes you could squeeze into 80 minutes, it would rival Citizen Kane. And I guess that's what the film comes down to. Have you got a dirty, sleazy, sordid, twisted, juvenile sense of humour? I have, and that's why I found it funny.

Picking the most tasteless joke is kind of like deciding who the world's most evil dictator is, but I'd have to go for the phone call where one character is using a porn chat line while eating strawberry and fish paste sandwiches (don't ask) and it's revealed that Johnny Vegas is sitting next to him having his breakfast. It's disgusting, it's crude but it's also very funny. As is the scene where a man is taped to the ceiling while watching his wife. Then there are the group sex scenes where Vegas is more interested in the parking and fixing the bed. The whole film has a very dysfunctional attitude to sex, one that is very British. Here sex isn't meant to be enjoyed and it isn't about love. It's just done so that you can brag to your mates as you're downing your 15th pint of lager. It's recreation. In fact, the whole film plays up the male fear of relationships. Men don't want to be nagged and they don't want to feel suffocated. They just want to have lots of sex with lots of different women.

I think that part of the reason that Sex Lives of the Potato Men got such vitriolic reviews was because of how unattractive and desperate the characters are. This skinny guy and this fat bloke will do anything for sex. Anything. But although some of the escapades in the film are outlandish, the desperation isn't too far from the truth. Men will literally debase themselves in the worst way for a little bit of action. We have no shame and no standards. We'll sell our mothers and soil our good names for ten minutes with a woman, even if it's completely joyless. That's just the way we are. But although this doesn't provide one with a warm, cosy feeling, and while it shows people at their worst, I can't help but find it funny. Sad, pathetic, sex-obsessed men are amusing.

But actually, it's not just the men who are sad and perverted. The women here are just as desperate, just as debased and just as filthy. You've got randy mother-in-laws, amorous grannies and a chip shop girl who likes to watch men scrubbing floors. According to Sex Lives of the Potato Men, we're all hopelessly kinky. But that's another reason why I kind of like it. It makes me feel normal and well adjusted. Far from making me feel bad by showing a film with muscled hunks and unattainably gorgeous women, it makes me feel good by showing people that are even beneath me.

However, this isn't to say that the film is a work of comedy genius. The filmmakers' idea of subtlety is having 69 on the front door of a house and calling a fish and chip shop 'Fishy Fingers'. But because I'm a person that is highly amused by everything scatological, sexual and that which could be deemed bad taste, there were more than enough laughs for me. I mean, yeah, it's kind of like Viz with the wit and the intelligence removed, but those knob and fanny jokes come thick and fast. And besides, personally, I find Sex Lives of the Potato Men a million times less offensive than dross like Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones' Diary. Yes Sex Lives may be like a tawdry tabloid that stains your skin, but at least it's a relatively honest depiction of life in Britain.

Sex Lives of the Potato Men is about the sex lives of several men involved in delivering potatoes. So there are no surprises there. It is, in fact, pretty much what you might expect from the title: that is, it's a quirky comedy involving sex and potato men. At times the film works. It's an edgy, sometimes uncomfortable comedy about the lives of some rather unimportant and rather average men who are having problems of various sorts with women. Where the film clearly does not work, and why it failed at the box office, is that the quirky, uncomfortable parts are perhaps just a shade too quirky and uncomfortable. Instead of laughing during the scene of a man suspended from a basement ceiling masturbating over another man while he makes love to his wife, I think most of us just kind of groan awkwardly and wonder what Andy Humphries was thinking. Well, perhaps we are shown what he was thinking all too clearly.

This film has been treated most unfairly.

If the message of the film was 'these men are always lusting after and getting sex-isn't that great!', then I would agree with the comments about it being 'for morons' as one reviewer put it.

However, these men are losers. They lust after sex, and it always goes wrong. There is no titillation involved. We are not encouraged to see them as some kind of super-studs that young lads would want to emulate.

We are not laughing about sex or bodily functions, we are laughing about the ridiculous image that sex has in the media, where everyone is young, fit and beautiful, they all have orgasms every time and everyone is 'at it' day and night with no ill effects.

I find it amusing that the reviewers that work for the media which promote the fake views of sex, have failed to see the point here.

I must add here that it is a credit to the film-makers that they never stooped to nudity in the film. All too often we are presented with naked women in films for no apparent reason. Here it would have been more justified, but the film-makers have realised that the audience has an imagination-we don't need to watch the group sex to know that it is there etc.

Overall I found this film to be extremely funny. There was no embarrassment in the audience with people feeling free to guffaw at any joke they found amusing, even if they were the only one that got it.

If I were to suggest any problems with the film, I would say that some of the Tolly storyline went a bit far-I was most concerned when he brought the octopus home, for example.

However it will be a long time before the image of Tolly enjoying his sandwich, whilst Johnny Vegas is trying to eat his cereal will leave my head.

Final verdict Crude, but not gratuitous. Hilariously funny. Misunderstood. Not for granny.