Well, what nice little surprise this was. Click and Collect (2018) is a short, made for TV film that I had no idea existed before randomly stumbling across it on Netflix, and with it being short and me already being Christmas filmed out (God I’ve got so many left to watch) I thought it would be a good idea to give it a go. After all, even if it was bad I wouldn’t have to suffer for too long. But as it turns out, I wasn’t suffering at all.
In terms of the quality of the film, for a made for TV film it is actually pretty good quality. It feels fairly cinematic throughout, while also managing to feel grounded and small scale which matches the narrative of the film. Speaking of the film’s narrative, it is effectively a retelling of Jingle All the Way (1996) except this film is so much better (I know that will be seen as sacrilege in many circles). But the comedic styling of the film is so much more down my street, British rather than American, and the film is also aimed at an older audience, so it works better than Jingle All the Way’s ridiculous comedic tendencies. The whole film relies on its main characters being relatable and having good chemistry, and thankfully Stephen Merchant and Asim Chaudhry work really well together. Stephen Merchant plays the straight man, grumpy and pessimistic really well, and gets a lot of laughs from his reactions to Asim Chaudhry who is the eccentric manchild. At the start of the film, I was really concerned that his character was going to be really annoying. A lot of times with manchild characters they can be too much and just end up being annoying rather than endearing and funny, and at the start of the film I was concerned that this is where this film was going to be going also. But Asim Chaudhry plays it really well, managing to get plenty of laughs, but also having a sensitivity to him that he is endearing, and you relate to him. The writing helps here as it gives him reasons for being as he is and allows his buffoonery to be character driven and not just there for the sake of being silly. Overall, I was really pleasantly surprised by this film. It is short which might be beneficial, but it has plenty of laughs, the narrative is fun and low scale which makes it an easy watch, and the relationship between the main actors works really well. I’d definitely recommend it.
Comments