Cruise of the Gods

[avevale_intelligencer]

inamac mentioned that this was on, and that she didn't want to watch it because it would just be fan-bashing. I saw it first time around, and had a different impression, and when I watched it again I enjoyed it even more. Just goes to show how powerful conditioned expectations can be; the first time I watched it I saw fan-bashing that wasn't even there. In fact, with one glaring exception, it's very positive about fans in general.

The plot concerns a failed actor, played by Rob Brydon, who twenty years previously starred in an sf series, Children of Castor. The fictional series itself suffers badly from what I have termed Garth Marenghi's Darkplace Syndrome. This is where a clever writer tries to take the piss out of the form and the content of something at the same time, the writing and the production. Invariably what results is that most loathsome of all comedic failures, a spoof that looks ineptly done. But the nature of the series is irrelevant. Cruise of the Gods is about (unsurprisingly) a fan cruise for devotees of this long-gone series, on which the said ex-star is one of the guests, along with the writer and an unknown bit player.

The glaring exception I mentioned above the cut takes the form of David Walliams, a man I can only surmise to be consumed by loathing for most of the human race. He has clearly hung around fans and observed their most extreme flaws, and created in Jeff Monks, the cruise organiser, one of his usual cruel and hateful caricatures. I could have done without him. But apart from him, without exception, the fans on the cruise come across as ordinary, intelligent and rational people who happen to have an interest, a passion.

Brydon's character, on the other hand, comes across as shallow, selfish, and arrogant, a man whose failure can be directly attributed to his own inability to interact with people as people, and a casual sexual predator who pretends to be a Nice Guy. He boards the ship already armed with the standard preconceptions about fans in general and his fans in particular, and it takes a crushing emotional body blow to force him to question those preconceptions. This blow is delivered by Russell (James Corden; this was the first time I'd seen him, and I was very impressed), who seems to be another fan, but turns out to be the actor's illegitimate son, trying to connect with his father in the only way he can. Corden makes Russell sensitive, perceptive and deeply hurt by the shortcomings of his parent, and of the writer of the series, another failure, who derisively and drunkenly reveals, in the middle of a long and scholarly lecture by Monks on the naming of characters in Children of Castor, that they were all anagrams of curries. Russell (slightly paraphrased): "Riodanto is a collision between Rio, the Spanish for river, and Dante, the Italian poet... It is also, coincidentally, an anagram of a popular Indian main course. It has to be a coincidence, because otherwise, Mr Bispham, I'd have to conclude that you are a talentless shit, whereas I prefer to think of you as a genius. What do you think, Mr Bispham? What do you think?"

The message of the production, if it has one, is this; you can talk about poor acting and slipshod writing and wobbly sets as much as you like, but that has no bearing whatsoever on a show's capacity to inspire enthusiasm and creativity in a community of fans, nor is that enthusiasm, that creativity, in any way a bad thing unless it is taken to antisocial extremes, something which happens exceedingly rarely in the wider fan community. Not even the many flaws and weaknesses of its principal actor can detract from the joy and loyalty which it is right and proper that a show like Children of Castor should engender among its core audience, and nor should they. At the end, the love of his son and the example of the fans seems to be having a redemptive effect on Brydon's character, and this is no stretch of credulity at all.

I ought also to mention Steve Coogan, who plays Brydon's co-star and makes him a genuinely nice guy (and a very bad actor) caught up in the whirlwind of stardom. I didn't think Coogan could do nice guys, so this was a surprise for me.

Overall, I'd recommend Cruise of the Gods to any fan.

*Something that spoils...

Comments

[willibald.livejournal.com]

Interesting to note that while we were producing Children of Castor the Americans were midway through the second series of Galaxy Quest