Kill Keith

Somebody, anybody, kill Keith Chegwin!

Somebody,
anybody, kill Keith Chegwin!

And don’t feel you have to stop there. While you’ve got your blood up, hunt
down Andy Thompson,
writer/director/executive producer of this malformed, aborted foetus of a film.

Make it slow.
Make it hurt. He deserves
it.

Shy, nice guy Danny (Marc
Pickering) is a runner on popular breakfast TV show The Crack Of Dawn, is secretly
in love with its presenter, the winsome Dawn (Susannah Fielding) and is bullied by her arrogant co-host Cliff (David Easter). Crack Of Dawn? You see what they did there? They make rude funny.

When it’s announced Cliff is leaving the show, the hunt is
on to find his replacement, with every C-list has-been presenter in the country
(Joe Pasquale, Russell Grant, Tony
Blackburn & Keith “Cheggers” Chegwin)
vying for the role.

But the vicious, psychotic murderer the press have dubbed
the Breakfast Cereal Killer (They make ‘nother funny! They very funny people!) is working his way through the
candidates for Cliff’s job, offing them in ‘hilarious’ breakfast-themed
ways. Can Danny get the girl of
his dreams before the killer? Who
is the Breakfast Cereal Killer? Will
Cheggers finally be appreciated and get the top job in breakfast telly? Will you care?

Actually, you won’t care, you really won’t.

Sometimes a truly bad film can be a delight. A guilty pleasure. Sometimes, a bad film is so bad, it’s
actually good. Sometimes, a bad film
is so bad, it’s just bad. And
sometimes, a bad film is sooooooo bad
it makes you want to tear open your own wrists with your teeth, fill your mouth
with your own hot, precious blood and spritz it at the screen until the sweet
release of unconsciousness takes you as you exsanguinate. Just so there’s no chance of ambiguity,
Kill Keith is one of the last type
of bad film.

A horror comedy that’s neither scary nor funny (they never
are, are they?), Kill Keith is just horrific. It’s painfully unfunny. It’s juvenile. The script is appalling. If it was revealed that the authors’
writing process had involved daubing the script on a cave wall in their own
faeces to see what sticks, it really wouldn’t be a huge shock. It might even be a relief. The comedy ‘highlights’ of the film are
Cheggers walking in on a elderly couple enjoying a spot of early morning oral
sex and a foul-mouthed rant by helium-voiced Joe Pasquale. Joe sodding Pasquale. You know, him what does the voice of a
plasticene dog in a ‘no win, no fee’ commercial. When your big comedy gun is Joe Pasquale, maybe it’s time to
shoot yourself. In an unfunny
post-modern jape, Tony Blackburn plays his own double while what appears to be
an obnoxious 13-year-old in a tracksuit plays him.

With the exception of lead actress Susannah Fielding who’s
actually rather good and deserves so much better, the acting is risible, the
celebs lampooning themselves with a clammy desperation and the
dead-behind-the-eyes intensity of CGI’d Tintin characters, the actors mugging
away like 12-year-old hoodies.
Littered with sub-plots that go nowhere, never has a film this busy been
so tedious, its 93 minutes dragging tortuously.

It wants to be quirky. It wants to be fun.
It wants to be original. But
it’s not. Every time the pace
flags, the film will shamble into Danny’s Walter Mitty-ish fantasy world where
he’s a tough, wisecracking private dick (emphasis on the dick) and Dawn is his
femme fatale or he’s a superhero and Dawn is his damsel in distress, each
whimsical aside further prolonging your agony.

Ultimately, if there’s any justice in this life (which I
seriously doubt), Kill Keith will
come to be seen for what it is; a perplexing cultural enigma designed to make
you ponder, to search for meaning, to ask the profound, philosophical and
dangerous questions. Why was this
film made? Why is it being
released? What kind of person puts
money into a film like this? Where
can I find them? Why aren’t the
giving me money to make a slightly-less crap film? Why the hell am I still watching this? Why don’t I just leave? I wonder if the girl playing Dawn fired
her agent? I hope so.

Inept in every way, Kill
Keith is less fun than stabbing yourself in the eye with a frozen dog turd.