Directed by: Jim O'Hanlon
Starring: Thomasin McKenzie, Tom Felton, Damian Lewis, Katherine Waterston, Ben Radcliffe, Emma Laird
The rigid social etiquette of Downton Abbey and similar movies depicting the wealthy and powerful British society of the 1930's is skewered in Fackham Hall (get it? Sounds like Fuck 'Em All). Like any movie with an Airplane! or Naked Gun style of comedy in which gags of all sorts are hurled at the viewer with varying degrees of success. Fackham Hall has some jokes that land and others which cause the audience to groan, but there are worse things you can do with roughly ninety minutes of your time.
The Davenports live in Fackham Hall, but times are tough. They may lose the property due to financial woes, but once their younger daughter Poppy (Laird) is married off to her first cousin Archibald (Felton), then all be right with the world...legalities be damned. But Poppy chooses to abandon Archibald at the altar to marry a low-class manure salesman and now the family is pressuring Rose (McKenzie) to marry Archibald even though she doesn't love him. She instead falls for a new servant (Radcliffe) who was sent there by his orphanage to deliver a letter for patriarch Humphrey Davenport (Lewis) but instead is hired mistakenly to be a member of the staff.
The plot is not as important in these types of spoofs as the jokes themselves. The actors deliver the straight lines and the gags in the same manner. It is better that they are not in on the joke or act as if they are. They need to stay above the ridiculousness while being part of it at the same time. Leslie Nielsen was a master at this, and these actors are all good enough to understand their assignment and make Fackham Hall operate as well as can be expected. Movies like this are hit-and-miss anyway. It's difficult to recreate Airplane! because that was groundbreaking in the world of movie comedy, but Fackham Hall does its best.
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