My friends didn't really like Four Lions. Well, they can go write why on their own blogs, because I loved it.
I've been a Chris Morris fan since The Day Today and his cry-laughing (often banned) Radio 1 show. I loved Brass Eye too, though after that I found his humour getting a little more esoteric and hard to follow. Jam and Blue Jam contained moments of genius, yet also a fair bit of sneering and navel-gazing. Nathan Barley, the media-savvy sitcom he worked on with Charlie Brooker, proved a little too vicious and 'in'. And when I heard he was making a film about Islamic terrorism, I expected something razor sharp, searingly controversial, and perhaps too clever for its own good. What I didn't expect was Four Lions.
The most surprising thing about this movie is how warm-hearted it is. How completely uncynical. It features the classic British sitcom premise - a group of lovable idiots on a sliding scale of stupidity trapped in impossible situations of their own devising. It's Father Ted, Blackadder, Fawlty Towers, Only Fools And Horses and 'Allo 'Allo... but most of all - as everyone keeps pointing out - it's Dad's Army... with suicide bombers.
Which still makes it sound more controversial than it actually is. Together with co-writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain (from Peep Show), Morris here uses humour as a wonderful levelling device. It's not so much a cry of "terrorists are people too!", more of "terrorists can be bumbling idiots just like us!" And it's not just a film about finding humour in fanaticism and fundamentalism either. It's also about finding humanity there. The Four Lions themselves are more than just cartoon caricatures, they're fully rounded and hugely sympathetic characters. Riz Ahmed in particular gives a star-making performance as their slightly less dim leader Omar, a young family man with a playfully devoted wife and a strict, traditionalist brother. There are some hugely moving scenes here, scattered amongst the slapstick, verbal idiocy ("Fuck Mini Baby-bel!") and explosions. Actually, the explosions were the one thing I felt didn't quite work. Or rather, they worked for me - I took them as the affecting moments of seriousness and shock that Morris I think intended... but much of the audience took them as further fodder for laughter. Morris says he didn't set out to make fun of people dying, but when so much of his film brings the baw-ha-has, I suppose it's easy for your audience to confuse dramatic punctuation with slapstick. Which is perhaps why I'd be more likely to recommend watching this film at home. The crowd I saw it with spoiled Four Lions slightly by laughing too much. Raucous and over-the-top guffawing at every gag - I was starting to wonder if they were pissed. Particularly the girl who had to nudge her mate and repeat every funny line, and after one particular gag was heard to remark, "ohh, I just proper pooed myself now".
Lovely. While Chris Morris is doing his best to use comedy to convince us we're all the same and blowing people up is wrong, I'm imagining lobbing a stick of gelignite into the row behind. "Fuck Mini Babybel!" indeed.
