Kevin and Perry go Large [DVD]

A pair of pubescent boys in all their spotty and obnoxious glory whose boundless lust for coolness and girls is matched only by their bottomless ineptitude at achieving these goals, Kevin (Harry Enfield) and Perry (Kathy Burke) were two regular characters in Harry Enfield and Chums, a successful BBC sketch show. Over the three minutes or so one of their television sketches would run in each episode, Kevin and Perry were hilarious comic creations, but their antics severely test the patience spread out over 82 minutes. The script is a pretty flimsy excuse for a series of intermittently amusing gags about Ibiza beach culture (a worthy target), the sexual excitability of teenage boys and bodily excrescences of various kinds. Our heroes set off for the sun to lose their virginities and debut their bedroom mixed single, All I Want to Do Is Do It. They meet the girls of their dreams, and a truly loathsome club DJ (the seemingly ubiquitous Rhys Ifans, without whom no bad British film could do without) and enjoy the fleshpots of beach life. It all starts to feel like a shabby stab at aping the success of such recent classic American gross-out comedies as American Pie and There's Something About Mary but without their emotional range (no, really, we're serious here) or ludic inventiveness. Nevertheless, it does have its moments, like the epic spot-squeezing sequence, a triumph of squelchy turpitude, and Kathy Burke is magnificent as ever cross-dressing as Perry, the quiet, slack-jawed one with the really, really bad posture and a major case of the hots for Kevin's mum. --Leslie Felperin