Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, 2013.
Directed by Declan Lowney.
Starring Steve Coogan, Colm Meaney, Sean Pertwee, Anna Maxwell Martin, Nigel Lindsay, Felicity Montagu, Simon Greenall, and Phil Cornwell.
SYNOPSIS:
When Alan’s radio station, North Norfolk Digital, is taken over by a new media conglomerate, it sets in motion a chain of events which see Alan having to work with the police to defuse a potentially violent siege.
55-years-old and more cautiously PC than in his static home days, local radio DJ Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) has become a tamer sort of individual. Conducting his business affairs from his garden shed and coasting through his job as disc jockey at North Norfolk Digital, Alpha Papa presents Partridge as a man nearing the twilight of his career. Still occasionally obnoxious and painfully lacking in self-awareness, Alpha Papa gives Alan Partridge – for the first time in the character’s history – the chance to be a hero.
A rather obvious attack on media corporatisation, Alpha Papa doesn’t feel as angry as perhaps Coogan and Partridge mainstay Armando Iannucci intended it to be. As Glendale Media – full of boorish, money-driven hacks and cowardly executives – takes over and makes changes at North Norfolk Digital, prompting sacked DJ Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney) to take the station’s staff hostage, Coogan and his army of creatives allow the satire to become too cartoonish to have much resonance.
Thankfully, the film is full of hysterical comedic set-pieces: Partridge preventing execution of a hostage while the Ski Sunday theme plays over the airwaves, or the overblown armed police response to Geordie Michael’s (Simon Greenall) soiled lunch box, for example. And as the titular Partridge, Coogan offers up the most agreeable, least cringeworthy version of the character yet.
It’s easy to forget that the last time we saw Alan Partridge in a major production, he was watching his flop autobiography get pulped. The character had never seemed so tragic before, and Alpha Papa seems designed to redeem him (which it successfully does – the film is surprisingly feelgood). The film also sidesteps the pitfall most projects that feature revived iconic comic characters do, and avoids reintroducing Alan Partridge as a crowd-pleasing parody of himself. Partridge, admirably, hasn’t returned repeating catchphrases from earlier TV or radio appearances, and instead comes away having discovered some new one-liners.
But predictably, catapulting Partridge from TV to the big screen does prove problematic in certain ways. Alan Partridge has always been a surprisingly malleable character, evolving appropriately as he moved from radio, to a chat show, to a sitcom, then on to mockumentaries and segmented podcasts. But with film a sleeker medium in which we’re used to seeing Partridge as star, something is inevitably lost.
The triviality of Partridge (he takes a break from a siege to discuss his athlete’s foot with the commanding police officer) is occasionally at odds with a more plot-driven narrative, actually a homage to Hollywood cop movies, so many of his rambling patters come across as haltingly tangential. That the unconventional humour of Alan Partridge is shoehorned into a familiar trial against adversity framework only lessens the impact. New characters to the Alan Partridge story – like Partridge’s station love interest, and even Colm Meaney’s Pat – are hugely underdeveloped, present only to aid the plot.
Regardless: this is Alan f***ing Partridge. At a time when the word ‘legend’ has been rendered almost meaningless, Alan Partridge is truly a legendary figure in the world of comedy. So Alpha Papa is flawed, and features a diluted version of Steve Coogan’s creation, but it’s a creation that at half-power still puts most other comic personas in the shade. A midway montage of the DJ back behind the radio desk taking calls features the character spruced up for film, but it reminds you of just how funny Coogan – and Alan Partridge – can be when back in familiar territory.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brogan Morris – Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the young princes. Follow Brogan on Twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion.
Originally published December 2, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
