Un-sexy films - The Fat Slags (2004)

Even the poster's bad

For those unfamiliar with British slang, a slag is a promiscuous woman. Ho and skank are synonyms. The Fat Slags is a comic strip in adult humour magazine, Viz. I'm a big fan of Viz magazine and have been reading it since I became an adult. The Fat Slags was never my favourite strip, but it captured the stereotype of drunken, obese and sexually willing women perfectly. Everyone knows or knew a fat slag.

The slags live on Shit Street (my aching sides) in a dump of a house. They get fired from their factory job and appear on a Jerry Springer style TV show. Simon Cowell style millionaire, Sean Cooley suffers a bump on the head and falls in love with the slags and gets them their own hit single and fame.

The film came to the big screen in 2004. If anything it was probably released five, if not ten years too late. The jokes seemed tired and despite some attempts at satire it doesn't really fit. The film was a massive flop. It was directed by, Ed Bye who directed and had a hit with Kevin & Perry Go Large. They picked the right director. The film flops for me as it just doesn't seem faithful to the source material. Yes, it's got some vulgar, toilet and sexual humour, but the slags aren't slaggy enough. The film tried to make them seem like loveable, bumbling idiots and seemed more annoying for it. The film received a 15 certificate in the UK and seemed watered down, at least in terms of sexual jokes. Fiona Allen played Sandra by donning a fat suit and wasn't really right for the role. Eastenders star, Sophie Thompson was much better. The make-up used was weird, they sort of looked like real-life cartoons, if that's not too oxymoronic to make sense. Such styles worked in The Flintstones movie and TV series Dinosaurs, but in The Fat Slags which is loosely based on real people, it is just unnecessary and maybe even childish. The attempts at satirising TV programmes like Jerry Springer, Pop Idol and multinational companies are too simplistic to be truly biting and Geri Halliwell playing a send up of herself would have been a good one-off joke, but not as an almost secondary character - she's in it for too long!

So far, The Fat Slags remains the worst film I've seen this year. It's far from being the worst film I've EVER seen, but given I'm a fan of Viz I'm sure many fans felt this film was a disservice. It was even condemned by its creators and it led to the comic strip being removed from the magazine. If you like The Fat Slags check out the animated episodes available on DVD, they're good and funny. In an interview Simon Donald said "Even the most idiotic, misguided teenage moron will not get a laugh out of this truly irredeemable crock of horseshit." That sums it up perfectly.