Wildly, thoroughly over the top and a hugely enjoyable romp

Rating: Null/10 (3 September 2011)

There is still something about many British-made films which makes them disappointingly – well, British. I'm not talking about the 'British' films which are, in fact U.S. productions made with U.S. money and are merely touted by our homegrown cheerleaders as being 'British' because they were made in British-based film studios with British technicians. I mean those which are a tad small-scale and which have a kind of defiant dog-in-the-manger feel to them. It's not just that the production values are lower, it's also how quickly they can resort to well-worn clichés and trade on a mythical Britishness. But there are now many British films which wholly transcend that feel, and Hot Fuzz is one of them. It, too, resorts to clichés, but does so fondly to send them up. Yes, it is ludicrously over the top but enjoyably so. Not once does it pull its punches, not once do the film drop its guard and give us a knowing wink which is a current failing of quite a few contemporary British comic actors: throughout it succeeds in spades because it is played dead straight, and is all the funnier for that. I saw this within hours of watching Paul, another Simon Pegg and Nick Frost vehicle and that, although also very entertaining, loses on points because, being made for the U.S. market and in the process being so oppressed by the imperative to succeed that it pulled its punches all too often. Hot Fuzz never does, from the tongue in cheek send-up of a small Gloucestershire town and its phoney bucolism, through to the gruesome murders and the wild carnage of the closing gunfight where most of the town's great and good are slaughtered. It would be difficult to exaggerate just how over the top it is, but despite that it hits the spot each time. For this viewer, at least, it is 100pc successful.