STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Warren (Johnny Harris) is an aspiring stand up comedian who has a slot booked at a grotty back street London club, where he is heckled by the drunken, rowdy Clark (Noel Clarke.) Rather than becoming scornful to his assailant's put downs, Warren sees a shining comic potential he wants to work with and tracks Clark down to the restaurant he works in, eager to form a double act with him. This sets the pair down a rickety and testing road where they lurch from one encounter to another in their bid to become big name stars.
Adapted from a stage play of the same name, Huge transforms into a small scale and short but quite successful movie adaptation. At a time when stand up comedy is regarded as 'the new rock and roll', where there's scores of fame and big bucks to be made in this field of entertainment, it's a relevant and perhaps even a little inspiring idea for a film. If nothing else, it's certainly a welcome break from the more downbeat, depressing 'kitchen sink' drama that once again tends to be doing the rounds a bit in independent British cinema, a nice, warm film with an unrelenting and undeniable air of the feel good factor to it.
If the film itself is a break away from the more grim cinematic output from Britain at the moment, it's also a break away for the two lead stars who are also associated with more gritty, raw Brit films. In a film where they moreorless are the cast, Harris and Clarke both open up and reveal different dimensions to themselves, as misguided but determined fools with something to prove and a dream to chase. Altogether, it's not enough to leave an impression of being brilliant, but it's certainly quite above average and surprising, and not in any way lost in translation. ***
