Martin Freeman in "Ali G Indahouse"

[Carol the Dabbler]

Martin Freeman showcases the hand sign of Da West Staines Massif, (fictional) Ali G's (fictional) gang, as seen here in Ali G's twitter pic (Ali G being one of the personae of comedian Sasha Baron Cohen). Since Mr. Freeman

in Ali G Indahouse, it's clear how he knows it.

Apparently you're familiar with that movie. I've never seen it. Do you consider it worth watching (in general and/or for Freeman's performance)?

[Caya]

 

Apparently you're familiar with that movie. I've never seen it. Do you consider it worth watching (in general and/or for Freeman's performance)?

 

Hmmm ... short answer: no, yes, in that order.

 

Long answer: that depends on whether you can stomach Sacha Baron Cohen's brand of humor (if you're familiar with it: I'd rate this movie as worse than Borat, but better than Brüno) and whether you're the patient type, for the funny bits are stretched a bit thin. Also, the humor doesn't pull any punches, so be prepared that, say, bestiality is referenced twice, iirc.

 

That being said, Martin Freeman nails his perfomance as Ali G's best mate. In fact, many of the supporting cast were fun to watch, gleefully pouring their heart into such absurd roles.

 

So if you decide seeing Mr. Freeman rap is worth some boredom and/or offense, rent it - but make sure there are no kids or easily shocked relatives around when you watch it .

[bborchar]

 

Apparently you're familiar with that movie. I've never seen it. Do you consider it worth watching (in general and/or for Freeman's performance)?

 

Hmmm ... short answer: no, yes, in that order.

 

Long answer: that depends on whether you can stomach Sacha Baron Cohen's brand of humor (if you're familiar with it: I'd rate this movie as worse than Borat, but better than Brüno) and whether you're the patient type, for the funny bits are stretched a bit thin. Also, the humor doesn't pull any punches, so be prepared that, say, bestiality is referenced twice, iirc.

 

That being said, Martin Freeman nails his perfomance as Ali G's best mate. In fact, many of the supporting cast were fun to watch, gleefully pouring their heart into such absurd roles.

 

So if you decide seeing Mr. Freeman rap is worth some boredom and/or offense, rent it - but make sure there are no kids or easily shocked relatives around when you watch it .

 

 

This was the part I cried laughing at:

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

... Martin Freeman nails his perfomance as Ali G's best mate. In fact, many of the supporting cast were fun to watch, gleefully pouring their heart into such absurd roles.

 

So if you decide seeing Mr. Freeman rap is worth some boredom and/or offense, rent it - but make sure there are no kids or easily shocked relatives around when you watch it .

Rap? Oh, good heavens, now I'll have to see it. I enjoy seeing Freeman do something different, and judging by the rap and that costume, this would seem to qualify. If the funny bits are few and far between, though, I'd better not watch that video now, for fear of spoiling the only big laugh!

 

Added:  Kind of pointless to rent it, since the DVD is only six or eight bucks on Amazon.  One customer review says, "Fans of BBC's "The Office" will barely recognize Martin Freeman as one of Ali G's poseur homeys...between Tim Canterbury and this role, let's just say Freeman's pretty much covered both sides of the spectrum and then some."

 

Yup, I'm intrigued!

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

OK, I finally broke down and got the DVD of Ali G Indahouse and watched it before I lost my nerve.  This movie definitely has something to offend just about everyone.  And it bogs down in a few spots.  But at its best, it's joyously silly.  And Martin Freeman is delightful.

 

But let's not ignore the cameo by another future Sherlock actor -- Jonathan "Anderson" Aris as the reporter at Ali G's hunger strike.

 

[Caya]

Glad you liked it (parts of it, anyway) ! I must admit I had no idea that Jonathan Aris was in it, it's been a while since I saw it.

[Carol the Dabbler]

We're now partway through the commentary.  The package says it's by Sacha Baron Cohen, but it's actually done by him and Martin Freeman, in character as the real-life Ali G and Ricky C, discussing how they portrayed themselves in the movie.  ("Ali" says that most of the other players were professional actors, except for the gangsters at the beginning, who were real gangsters.)

 

I shall take a moment here for my usual diatribe against commentary without subtitles.  My hearing is good (albeit not quite what it used to be), but I frequently find subtitles helpful, especially when people are speaking a foreign language such as British.  Add to that the inherent difficulties unique to commentaries -- the movie soundtrack is running in the background, everyone's talking at once, and you can't see them (either to be sure who's saying what, or to do a bit of lipreading) -- and the comprehensibility level can plummet.  I am definitely more likely to buy a DVD if I know that the commentary is subtitled.  So far, this feature is rare, but highly appreciated.

 

In this case, the soundtrack is playing at nearly normal level, so that I'm sometimes unsure which is dialog and which is commentary.  And the characters are not only speaking British, they're speaking what might be called an obscure dialect.  So I'm not catching everything, to put it mildly.  It was worse at the beginning, but then "Ali" and "Ricky" seemed to settle into something of a routine, and I got the hang of it, more or less.

 

"Ricky" frequently interjects tidbits approaching actual information (though his attempts are often shot down by "Ali").  He comments that the scene in bborchar's video above seems to be everyone's favorite, due to his own performance -- but this is immediately contested by "Ali" of course.

 

[Caya]

I shall take a moment here for my usual diatribe against commentary without subtitles.  My hearing is good (albeit not quite what it used to be), but I frequently find subtitles helpful, especially when people are speaking a foreign language such as British. 

 

 

Seriously, though, I hear ya. I usually don't even watch commentaries unless they are subtitled or I *really* dig the film (and that's why I love Ariane DeVere so much) because having to concentrate on rapidly spoken English without matching visuals gives me a headache after a while.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I can imagine!  Your written English is excellent, but judging by my own efforts with Spanish, the difficulty scale goes something like:

 

1 (easiest) -- reading

2 (not quite so easy) -- writing

3 (much harder) -- speaking, and

4 (hardest) -- listening

 

I have enough trouble with commentaries in American English!

 

We finished listening to the commentary tonight.  "Ricky" gradually began using words like "exacerbate" and "puerile" -- more nearly Freeman's own vocabulary, but with the character's accent and vocal mannerisms -- and "Ali" accused him of putting on airs.

 

Are you staying up late -- or did you get up early?

 

[Caya]

Got up early and have to leave in a couple of minutes (6:28AM here). Your difficulty scale matches my experiences pretty accurately, although listening is not quite that hard when there's some visual context - a film versus a radio play, for instance. Reading and writing is easy, because you can take as much time as you need to (thanks for the compliment, though ),

 

That Ali G commentary does sound hilarious, temptingly so, but seeing as I had difficulty understanding Ali G as is, I think I'll pass .

[Carol the Dabbler]

Yeah, it was a challenge for sure!  I understood about half of it, and that's counting parts where I'm pretty sure I got the gist of what they were saying, if not all the words.

 

I had considerably less difficulty understanding what people were saying on our previous (defunct) TV.  We now have a large flat-screen TV, and the picture is just wonderful, but I think we need to check into some kind of auxiliary sound system.  We don't need "home theater" sound, just something that I can understand!

 

[Caya]

You should actually get one of those home theater systems then. Ours has a setting where you can just turn the speech part of the sound louder and clearer (as opposed to everything), and that is one perfect feature with all those blu-rays that have speech-deafening orchestral scores as their default sound setting.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Oh, wow, I'd never heard of that before -- it sounds wonderful!  I hate all that loud music (and even louder sound effects).  Thanks for mentioning that feature!

 

Just too bad that it presumably would not separate the commentary from the movie dialog!

 

[Caya]

Not in my experience, no, I'm afraid.