The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse

Plot synopsis:
One night, Jeremy Dyson calls the other members of The League of Gentlemen to talk about a new series idea he's had, in which everyone in Royston Vasey would wake up with a tail, but the other writers no longer wish to write the series and are keen to move on to new projects. Suddenly he is confronted by three characters from the series; Papa Lazarou and the Tattsyrups. Dyson tries to run, but falls off the edge of a cliff.
At the church in Royston Vasey, the local vicar, Bearnice Woodall, tells fellow residents Pauline Campbell-Jones and Mr. Chinnery that there are signs of The Apocalypse occurring.
Hilary Briss has escaped from prison and is on the moors near Royston Vasey. He finds Herr Lipp there and holds him hostage. Briss uses Lipp to steal a car, driven by Geoff Tipps. Fleeing fireballs, Briss leads them through a door in the church crypt, and they emerge a half-century later in the real town of Hadfield, Derbyshire, the setting for Royston Vasey in The League of Gentlemen television series.
With the situation explained to them by Lazarou and the Tattsyrups, Briss, Herr Lipp and Geoff Tipps travel to London. Lipp pretends to be his creator, Steve Pemberton, and goes home, where he discovers that Pemberton has been neglecting his family.
Briss and Tipps read through The League of Gentlemen's new project, a historical horror called The King's Evil. While Tipps continues to read, Briss chases after an escapee Pemberton and re-captures him, but when they return to the hideout, Briss discovers that Tipps has written himself into the plot of The King's Evil as the hero.
Lipp meanwhile has become deeply attached to Pemberton's family, in particular his children. He looks through some of Pemberton's personal belongings in order to find Pemberton's notes.
Briss takes Pemberton up to Hadfield, where Pemberton telephones Reece Shearsmith to tell him what has been going on. Shearsmith does not believe that Pemberton has been captured and thinks that Briss is playing a joke on him, so Briss comes to the phone. Shearsmith initially believes that Mark Gatiss is joining in on the "joke" when he opens a door and Gatiss is standing right in front of him. Shearsmith and Gatiss find and capture Herr Lipp, and they travel up to Hadfield.
They enter the dimensional door, go back to 1950s Royston Vasey, and swap their hostages, but Pemberton is killed by a stray gunshot. Dr Erasmus Pea tries to convince Briss to leave Royston Vasey and join him, but Briss refuses. Pea kills his fellow characters and turns them into a gigantic homunculus, which Briss fights. Shearsmith and Gatiss climb up the wall of church in order to escape, but Shearsmith falls to his death.
Briss kills the monster, but he himself is stabbed in the back by Pea. Before he dies, he tells Tipps that he is the only one who can save Royston Vasey. Tipps fights with Dr. Pea, while Gatiss tries to return to modern world. However, he is stopped by Herr Lipp, who holds him at gunpoint. Tipps manages to kill Pea using part of the homunculus, but the chaos still goes on. In the church, Lipp says he will kill Gatiss. The other characters try to dissuade him, as they believe that once all the writers are dead, Royston Vasey will cease to exist and all of them will die. Lipp claims that they will in fact be better off, because as long as they're being controlled by someone else they have no free will and can never change for the better. Tipps tells Lipp that because he managed to save the day and can therefore change, Lipp does not need to kill Gatiss. He persuades Herr Lipp to hand him the gun, only for Tipps to accidentally fire it and kill Gatiss himself.
With all the writers now dead, the residents of Royston Vasey prepare for the worst, but instead, everything calms down and The Apocalypse ends. The characters realise they now have free will. Herr Lipp adopts some orphaned children, the vet, Mr Chinnery, finds a rabbit and is able to take care of it without killing it, and Bearnice and Pauline appear to become romantically involved. Tipps leaves the church, waving goodbye to Edward, Tubbs and Papa Lazarou. It appears that Royston Vasey can continue to exist independently of its dead creators.
However, Dyson is still alive and in a coma after falling off the cliff. Everyone else in the world now has tails.

Tags: good versus evil, comedy, humor, murder

Review:
Few shows have survived transition from radio to TV to stage show to film but The League of Gentlemen have achieved it with suitable aplomb.The talented writer/performers had initially envisioned a Monty Python style medieval adventure, but as soon as writing began they soon realised that the characters they have lived with had become very real and deserved better.
With that, the Royston Vasey folk realise their very existence is under threat as the writers decide to disregard the fictitious town and work on a 17th Century romp instead.With the exception of Michael Sheen playing much unseen League member Jeremy Dyson, The League play pretty unlikeable caricatures of their real life personae as well as the familiar faces of Tubbs ("I made a little brown fishy"), nightmare inducing sexual predator Herr Lipp, butcher Hilary Briss and an unlikely hero - irate businessman Geoff Tibbs.
The second is to do something else- something quite different, à la Monty Python.Thankfully, the creators of the cult TV series have gone for the second option, and they've come up with something unique, clever and funny- it couldn't feel less like a TV episode.Try to get your head around this- the writers, playing themselves, are confronted by their Royston Vasey alter-egos, played, of course, by them, and told to continue writing the series, otherwise apocalypse will befall the village.High-concept, contrived and easy to screw up?
After three outstanding BBC television series' and a Christmas special, the bizarre and grotesque (yet perversely lovable) characters of bleak fictional town Royston Vasey make the jump to celluloid, along with their creators - The League of Gentlemen.
The 'Local show for Local People' showcased the Gents talent for live performance and opened doors for the gents to do more live performing such as 'Art' in the west end.The fans favourite has always been the Christmas Special, less of a sketch show and more a tribute to classic horror films yet still wrapped up in the delicious League style.And then of course there was the 'difficult' third series, still a hit with the loyal hardcore fans of course, but maybe a little bit ahead of its time for a mainstream TV audience.As I say, a lot to live up to.So now we have the film and...Well a film is different isn't it?
Along the way we manage to bump into favourite characters from the show but always within the central story unlike the TV sketch show.I was glad that the film was dark in places, a little scary and a little strange...only fitting for The League of Gentlemen.
I am not a professional reviewer of films, so I am finding it difficult to put into words how much I enjoyed this film but for now I will just say that if the supposed benchmark for British Comedy films in recent years was the excellent 'Shaun of the Dead' then I am sorry but a new benchmark has just been set by the inventive, hilarious and sometimes a little scary...The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse.Jason Kenny 2005.
It follows Geoff Tipps, Hilary Briss and Herr Lipp as they try and save fictional Rosyton Vasey from the disinterest of their creators.The League play a wide range of their characters and themselves (or character based on themselves) and are ably supported by the cream of British character and comedy actors such as Bernard Hill, Victoria Wood and David Warner.Warner is a particular stand out reminding me of his smooth and cutting turn in 'Time Bandits'.The film swims in and out of various realities and allows some of the denizen's of Rosyton Vasey some space to grow beyond their usual limits of their comedy shtick.Steve Pemberton's Herr Lipp has a great Bretchian moment near the end of the movie and has to make a decision about his purpose and meaning in life which brings a lump to the throat at an unexpected moment and surprises you with its tender affection for the characters.This echoes something Mark and Reece said in the Q & A afterwards, that the plot of the league being tired of their famous characters is spurious and that the whole film is really a love letter to them.For a format that started as a radio character-based sketch show, these guys have really evolved the idea so far as to sustain a movie which takes you on a journey through fiction, 'reality', comedy, tragedy and a pleasing journey for two of the less obvious characters to carry a long form story from their 70 odd existing creations.The fans of the show will love it.
Some of the best characters such as Tubbs n' Edward, Pauline n' Mickey n' the bizarre Papa Lazarou had about 10 minutes screen time between them, instead a lot of the film is taken up with the real life creators (aka the league of gentlemen) and some rather poor characters from their new 17th century story.
"Wouldn't it be funny," thought Steve Pemberton, as the League sat down to pen a film script, "if our characters came after us, wanting to know why we wanted to kill them off?" Well, as it turns out, no, not really.
In this misguided, post-modern set up (three words: Last Action Hero), bestial butcher Hilary Briss, predatory German exchange-teacher Herr Lipp and broken businessman Geoff Tipps step into the 'real world' to try to prevent the apocalypse of Roysten Vasey and sabotage the Gents' new project - an 18th century romp called The King's Evil.
i went to see the league of gentlemen's apocalypse last night at a preview screening with a Q & A afterwards at the National Film Theatre.Having been a huge fan i was worried that the film might not live up to expectations but how wrong i was!
The film follows three lesser known characters, Hilary Briss, Geoff Tipps and Herr Lipp as they attempt to save Royston Vasey from an apocalypse being rained down on them due to the writers stopping writing the show.
I think a lot more could have been done with that angle (the two different worlds, the fish-out-of-water experience of the characters, the confusion and surprise as people try to comprehend and distinguish the characters and writers from each other.) But too much time is wasted with pushing this painful plot to the end with as much 'bizarre' and 'goof' as is humanly possible.
tubbs and edward are in it for a few mins, micky has 1 line, and her lipp just reels out the same tired old puns, also mr briss's accent just changes about 5 times in the film tons of badly acted extras, and really a few laughs that they seem to recycle for 2 hrs i honestly feel this series has been completely ruined by this god-awful piece of crap..........batman and robin all is forgiven.
Not only was it funny, what you would expect from these guys, but it was so clever, the whole basis of the film being that the characters have left Royston Vasey and are pursuing their creators - the League of Gentlemen in reality.
David Warner's turn as Doctor Pea is fantastic, slightly camp and very funny.The League have always been brilliant at blending humour with sadness and emotion - and the climax of this film, where Herr Lipp is struggling with the idea that he and the other Vasey residents are just fictional people who will never be able to change who they are or their purpose - and to witness how it's breaking him down, is really sad and beautiful to watch at the same time and that really shows the Gents' talent - something for which they are terribly overlooked for to this day.And then you have that rather clever ending - where you sit in wonder - with Joby Talbot's beautiful theme music playing.
very disappointing and incoherent - every now and then a germ of an idea would develop and be discarded in the next line - it had the feel of a film that had been cut and re-cut to try and make it work - I was bored and distracted all the way through, and I'm speaking as a huge fan of the series.
The best and most loved characters only had five minute roles, whilst the three mediocre characters were all the way through the film.Unlike most British movies that are based on television series, this film does kick off and it seems to be on to a winner, but the pace suddenly stops when the three mediocre characters are in the real world waiting to capture the three comedians.The film then doesn't go anywhere when Hillary in a room with the captured Steve, Lipp masquerading as Steve, and Geoff somehow writing himself in to the Medieval times.
The medieval scene was okay but Monty Python did it a lot better and of course funnier, with cameos from Peter Kay and Simon Pegg, both didn't say anything funny, Kay had a line and Pegg just sat up on wall looking bored.What also grated me was that they seem to forget what happened in the previous episodes such as Hillary escaped to the Caribbean in the television in series 2, but in the film he's escaped from prison, and also Lipp is a paedophile vampire which wasn't mentioned at all in the movie, which was also quite disturbing when he's left alone looking after the children.There were lots of plot holes and unexplained situations such as how did Geoff and the Dark One escape from the Medieval times back in to Royston Vasey?
Like Series 3 it started of good but as the film progressed, it slowly went downhill and had a very weak predictable ending.They would of been better off doing what Monty Python did and remade all their best and classic sketches from Series 1-3 and the Christmas special, and turned that in to a film which would of re-introduced the characters to a whole new audience, who can't be asked to watch the series or to tight to buy the DVDs.Best advice is save your money and wait till it's on television.....
In my more honest moments though, I had my doubts about the likely success of the concept, and whether the writers would be able to sustain the high level of wit, comedy and horror that infuse the original series.Unfortunately my fears were not unfounded, and the film was a huge disappointment.
I went to the cinema with a group of die-hard league fans and we were all in agreement that this film wasn't as funny or dark as the three series before.
To make any film was unnecessary, let alone make one as awful as this, where it feels like the actors are just going through the motions in order to please an audience.The concept is that the inhabitants of Royston Vasey realise that they are fictional characters and so they track down real writers Mark Gatiss, Jeremy Dyson, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton (playing themselves apart from non-actor Jeremy Dyson who is played by Michael Sheen).
It's nice to see Bernice back but again, she doesn't get a lot of screen-time.So, contrary to the poster, the three lead characters are bitter businessman Geoff (Reece Shearsmith), murderous butcher Hilary (Mark Gatiss) and malapropic pervert Herr Lipp (Steve Pemberton).
and without wishing to be rude, seeing the writers breaks the illusion that Royston Vasey's inhabitants are different individuals.Some of the positive reviewers have argued that the film shows the depth of TLOG and that people simply wanted their favourite characters and a load of catchphrases.
Although there were quick nods to The Shining, Scanners and other films, I think they could have really pushed the Wicker Man aspects which are the backbone of the Royston Vasey experience.Ultimately, I came away disappointed - but a friend of mine (who has never seen the series) thought it was really good, so I guess it depends which camp you fall in.
Now i know a lot of people thought that this film was just a flop but i didn't.it had some great lines and acting.i did however thought the cameos were limited.the idea is great so if you are a fan of the series then its definitely for you :):):):)it brings out the more dark side of the league of gentlemens and shows they can write a horror film if they wanted to.I don't understand why people don't like this film as i found it rather enjoyable but then again I'm a fan of the series.
league of gentleman has been the most disturbing British sitcom to be on t.v and how can a funny movie be so bad rated,they just have no taste this film will make you want to watch over and over again and still find it funny.it is surprising that it has done bad but it is British the cinema do crap most of the time but this time it (in my words) a boost with comedy with a giraffe spunks over Lady's, this is a top British comedy and better than dodge-ball, so by this and it won't prove you wrong as i don't really laugh through films but this film was amazing through comedy with the best characters but i was a bit disappointed of how much Edward and Tabb's were in there for back to typing buy this film and it won't disappoint you..
The best parts of the film are really enjoyable thanks to the ways the League of Gents mess around with their characters, and not due to the jokes themselves, which aren't all that great.The idea behind the film, which annoyed many people but not myself, is that the characters have to leave Royston Vasey and go to the real world in order to meet their creators and save themselves from being ignored in favor of a 17th century film script the Gents are working on.
The best part of this script is their handling of the classic Royston Vasey characters, especially Herr Lipp, who gets a big and fun part in the film.
This could be viewed as a bit "up it's own back-side", but I thought it was clever and a departure from the "Grace Brothers on holiday" outings that TV Series movies can descend into.Well worth going to see, and it should appeal to die-hard League Fans (if not - shame on you.) and regular cinema goers wanting something different - (Start stirring National Anthem) It's British, damn it.
it was more of an explanation of what they planned to do, and looked like some of the writers disagreed on the fate of the characters and they made a joke of this by killing him off in the first 30 minutes.If your a true fan of the league of gentlemens ability to stay fresh then you'll hate this film.
At one point, I thought it might just me before I realised hardly any laughs were minting from the rest of audience.I wasn't expecting much of a plot (very few TV comedies stand up to being stretched over 90 minutes) but thought the odd bit of classic L.O.G dialogue or visual joke (like at the start of each programme) would carry a film.
Being on screen is something that the League take full advantage of, with heads blowing up, (it'll come as a surprise who it is) and gruesome murders with random Middle Ages style battles all the way.Geoff is easily the funniest character of the three protagonists in this film, because he has the best one liners and overall behaviour, just like in the series.
Soon all three realities have weaved together, and the result is exhilarating: Geoff Tipps being knighted in the middle ages (and trying to court Queen Victoria Wood); the real League of Gentlemen in Royston Vasey, being confronted by characters like Pauline and Dr. Chinnery; David Warner summoning an homunculus outside of Bernice's church.
If you didn't like the TV shows, or you have never seen them, then you wouldn't get much out of the film, and it certainly isn't a good way to introduce the odd characters that inhabit Royston Vasey.
(Peter Kay?) Personally, i am just thankful that it wasn't the Edward, Tubbs and Papa Lazarou show, and that they chose the 3 best characters in the series to headline the motion picture, especially Sir Goeff Tipps arguably the funniest of the bunch.Actually, this is less of a Summary more of a fairly obtuse blog-like thing, but what the hell, the film was awesome, and i guess that's all that counts..
Most of the recognisable and popular characters get some good moments, but this film also gives the lesser known and explored characters an opportunity for storylines and screen time, the plot is twisted and a bit difficult to explain, but it is essentially the bizarre fictional world clashing with the real world, it is weird, but that's probably what the creators wanted, and there are enough funny and dark moments to satisfy fans of the TV show, a reasonable surreal horror comedy.
the only thing i would say is that for the movie to really work they shouldn't have made a third series which tied up endings for the characters as none of this has been referenced in the film - Pauline and Mickey aren't married, Edward and Tubbs are alive and Papa Lazarou is, well...himself.
I just saw the film and i must say i liked it (being a fan of the series) and it was good to see all the old faces especially tubbs,edward and good old papa laz (hello Dave).I think most people know the basic story by now(look above) and it was nice to see the "forgotten gentleman".All i can say is watch for the massive twist at the end that i must admit most people in the cinema didn't get.