The laws of physics are challenged early in Kevin & Perry Go Large, when Harry Enfield’s sullen, spotty teenager foils a bank robbery with his erection. Later on in the film – one of the most successful British movies in UK box office history – the camera is splattered by the gloop from an infected belly-button piercing, Kathy Burke cops off in a sand dune while dressed in full Gallagher-brother drag, and a third-act cameo is provided by EastEnders’ Phil Mitchell. Kevin & Perry Go Large, about a pair of sex-starved mates attempting to lose their virginity in Ibiza, is absolute tosh. But it’s our tosh: the product of a nation that invented Viz, Lucozade, and Denise van Outen. And 25 years ago this month, it was the sort of slapdash, locally made and proudly creaky tosh that British audiences regularly flocked to see. Today, though, things are different. And it begs a simple question: did the movies change, or did we?
The year 2000 is often considered a nadir in the story of the British film industry, with too many nascent production companies – each flush with National Lottery funding – trying to make their own Guy Ritchie movies, or their own spins on Richard Curtis, or films designed to capitalise on the (questionable) allure of the Primrose Hill set. Numerous releases became punchlines in their own right: the office romcom Janice Beard 45 WPM with Patsy Kensit and Rhys Ifans; the grotty gangland turkey Rancid Aluminium with Sadie Frost and Rhys Ifans; the... err... equally grotty gangland turkey Love, Honour and Obey with Sadie Frost and Rhys Ifans. Others have been largely forgotten: Kelly Macdonald’s bingo hall comedy House!; the clubland murder mystery Sorted; the unholy union of disco music, psychic powers and a naked Stephen Fry titled Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?
