There is plenty of potential dramatic and comic mileage in the story of two rival actors holed up together in a trailer near an active Icelandic volcano. Sadly, this new collaboration from The Young Ones alumni Nigel Planer and Adrian Edmondson is literal, trite and full of lazy caricature.
Rufus Hound as the alcoholic fading star Gary Savage and Samuel West as the pompous Hugh are engaging enough, but the script gives them very little of substance. The two are stuck together attempting to shoot a scene in the latest instalment of a sci-fi franchise.
Hound appears for the first time baffled as to why he is in a ridiculous costume. From there, the two former drama school contemporaries bicker and rant about the nadirs in their professional and personal lives.
Between them is the often exasperated production assistant Leela (Nenda Neururer), trying to hold the volatile egos and the production together.
The tectonic plates move, the trailer physically jolts and the arguments intensify, but there is very little dramatic momentum in the plot. Too often, shouting is a substitute for wit; jokes about the Icelandic faith in elves and plenty of references to London theatres and Daniel Day-Lewis’s method acting fall flat.
Material like this demands either more substance and pathos or a doubling down on the farce and absurdity. The production—while performed with gusto—delivers neither. There is a sense of smug self-congratulation in the writing, as if the luvvie in-jokes were enough.