Saturday 31 May 2014

Postman Pat - review

This is not the Postman Pat I know. For one thing, gone is the quaint stop motion animation, replaced with very cheap looking computer animation. Secondly, Postman Pat no longer works for the Royal Mail instead employed by a company called the Special Delivery Service... the perils of privatisation I guess.

The transfer from the small to silver screen requires something a little bigger than a misplaced parcel or lack of correct postage and so Pat doesn't receive his bonus he enters a talent competition run by Simon Cowbell (my sides) to win a holiday to Italy for his wife as a late honeymoon (but they have a young son... how bad is the pay at SDS?), meanwhile a devious young executive seeks to replace the entire workforce with robots to save money... and presumably take over the world.

At times it was hard to work out who this movie was aimed at. Parents taking their young kids to the cinema to see it would probably have been kids themselves when the first series came out in the Eighties but would they get all the random science fiction movie references from films such as Forbidden Planet, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Westworld and even Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat Kill Kill.

Or the bit where the family enjoy reading The Postman Always Knocks Twice. Because that is an appropriate book to read to your young child?!

The most puzzling aspect of the film is that while Stephen Mangan provides the voice of Pat, his singing voice is that of Ronan Keating... Who appears as himself just ten minutes prior to Pat's singing performance. They're the same voice?! How does Simon not notice this?! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!!!

If you want my advice, don't even bother waiting for this film on DVD as this is one Postman who certainly doesn't deliver.

1 star

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