8 Minutes Idle, 2012.
Directed by Mark Simon Hewis.
Starring Tom Hughes, Ophelia Lovibond, Montserrat Lombard, Antonia Thomas, Jack Ashton, Pippa Haywood and Paul Kaye.
SYNOPSIS:
Dan loves the ‘easy life’ of a call-centre operator in Bristol, but unwelcome changes are forced upon him when his mother kicks him out of the family home. He also loves colleague Teri, but has more pressing concerns in the form of terrifying boss Alice, who has designs on her confused employee.
8 Minutes Idle has had a painful route to the big screen. Funding issues have plagued the production, and though the movie had already been shot the producers had to turn to Kickstarter to give it a final push over the line when original distributors Revolver met their maker. After such a palaver to get it out, it would be a pity if it turned out not to have been worth the bother.
The title refers to the time a call centre worker can take between calls before their employers start to believe they’re a workshy layabout deserving the heave-ho. 8 Minutes Idle is set primarily in such a call centre, and it does a fine job of putting across the tedium and grind of taking calls from generally horrible people in bad moods, when you’re not in the greatest of moods yourself.
Central to the story is Dan, played by Tom Hughes, who begins the movie getting his head slammed in the fridge door by his own mother for a blunder involving his father and a stolen lottery ticket. This is the first of various MacGuffins used to push forward a story that, by itself, would likely fall into the type of listlessness so expertly epitomised by the somnolent Dan throughout. Dan has to move out, has nowhere to live but the office, and downhill things go from there.
The film is billed as a romantic comedy, but the romance element is never really front and centre. Dan is smitten with the elusive Teri (Ophelia Lovibond) but also harbours a grim desire for malevolent management harridan Alice, played with majesty by Montserrat Lombard. The scenes in which Dan and Alice threaten to consummate their hideous passion for one another make for pleasingly uncomfortable viewing, culminating in a gruesome conclusion and doom for Dan’s poor, put-upon cat.
But the film is really aiming at comedy, and in this the acting is the key to 8 Minutes Idle’s qualified success. The funny, likeable central characters are backed superbly by a cast of misfits, typifying the bizarre nature of life in Bristol. Jack Ashton is particularly heroic as Ian, in one scene pecking Dan half to death with an imaginary emu in an excellent example of physical comedy from both Ashton and Hughes. He also has cider on his cornflakes.
The direction is very well judged, complementing the actors and playing to their strengths, while the production uses Bristol as a minor cast member to impressive effect. Plot-wise it’s a messy film, perhaps in part due to the original source material (Matt Thorne’s novel of 2001) having been chopped up by the author himself in a screenplay that has changed many times over the years. It takes no great pains to explain itself, or why the various characters do what they do with ever-increasing absurdity.
Thankfully the acting is so often sublime that the film manages to ride on the coat-tails of its characters to a gently agreeable conclusion. The film is being released on a ‘collapsed format’ basis – it’s available in cinemas, hard copy and online simultaneously. And, thankfully, it was just about worth the effort to get it there.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Lockie
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Originally published February 13, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
