Four Lions

I remember the first time I saw this film, thinking it was one of the funniest I had ever seen, and I haven't seen many that have made me laugh as much since. Chris Morris is known for black comedy and 'Four Lions' is certainly fantastically dark.

The plot, the characters, the dialogue - everything about the film is funny. The stupidity of the main characters combined with the absurdity of their plans make this a truly hilarious film and a great piece of entertainment.

'Four Lions' is a comedic gem. A rare naturally funny film that is guaranteed to make you laugh.

"What are we going to do tonight, Brain?" "Same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!" Is it wrong of me to compare "Four Lions" to the WB animated series "Pinky and the Brain"? I don't think so. This film is filled with side-splitting laughter and satirical takes on suicide-bombers plotting one ridiculous terrorist attempt after another even more ridiculous terrorist attempt. Clone Pinky two more times, convert the four of them to Muslim extremists and place them in London in today's world, and you've got Omar and his fellow anarchists trying to teach the world a lesson.

Their incompetence is taken to the same extremes as their beliefs. Their possible targets include expletive-described Disney theme parks, their own Mosque, and using such genius methods as strapping a bomb to a crow, or to themselves as they are running around a field. You will laugh until you cry.

Laughs aside, it takes a special kind of film to create four protagonists out of inept suicide-bombers and emotionally connect you. And we haven't even touched the moxie that these filmmakers have to tackle such a subject. Comparisons to "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" and Monty Python are all valid here. Even if this story isn't your style, it's hard not to be impressed with how they pulled off "Four Lions".

I'm no easy viewer and too often do I find myself being bored while watching a movie, or just barely interested.

I wasn't expecting much from this one and after a quick reading of the synopsis, I just thought "say whaat ?". As a reminder you might check again the IMDb summary and try to picture it seriously, you would expect some "sofa talking action" - as a friend would describe movies that have more dialogs than action scenes.

Long story short : that is, without any doubts, the most stupidly funny movie I've seen this year and if you haven't seen it already ... just go (Ok to be honest, I would also put Revenge of the Fallen even if its last year, the level of stupidity is clearly enough for a couple of years).

Whatever you are looking in a movie this one will deliver, it is filled with dumb-touching characters despite their "mission" as terrorists. The acting is not only great as a comedy but just strait out great, any one in the movie have something special and memorable.

Hell, you could even try to get a social commentary out of it but that'd be a long stretch, it's meant to be a comedy with a soul not just the usual "a few scenes funny and forget me next week" kind of movie.

I was really pleased to find this gem completely by chance and hope you will too as this is how comedy films are meant to be.

In the UK, Chris Morris is famous for the very controversial "Brasseye" series, and he has taken that iconoclastic attitude to the big screen to help create this wonderful little film.

It's a crude yet intelligent satire on a group of young men who want to be martyrs for the Islamic Al-Qaeda in the UK. Rather than portray them as dark shadowy men, they are really just everyday bumblers and naive men. The frightening aspect is that despite the humour, they are aiming to mass murder which always is behind the scenes.

The film uses humour to demystify the self-styled jihadists and take away any sort of menacing notoriety and show them as the frightening bunglers that they are. The fear is when one group actually manages to carry out what they set out to do.

This film is worth watching. You will be rolling with laughter, but you will end the film with many thoughts on the questions raised also. It's simply another great bit of political satire, and I recommend it highly.

The film can be approached from two angles; as a comedy and as an important contemporary cultural text. As a comedy it succeeded beyond expectations. Part of the pleasure surely came from the spectacle of the event; a sold out screening with cast and crew present along with regional cultural references that resonated infectiously with many in the audience, but this can take nothing away from the many levels of comedy at work within this film. There were elements of overacted screwball comedy; there were underplayed facial expressions and reactions that added a wealth of character and personality to the comedy; further still, there were elaborately constructed situational set pieces. All these elements along with explosively dynamic dialogue that was well delivered combined to send the audience into tears of laughter.

In a separate issue to the comedy there was the cultural commentary, which is always going to draw attention when it is such a taboo subject as Jihad: a word that is often avoided at all costs. The film unapologetically offers a plethora of questions around motivation, meaning and justification which it never falls into the trap of giving patronizing, melodramatic answers to nor does it preach any solutions.

The many characters were all utilised to give different points of views and different perspectives; the main protagonist Omar (Riz Ahmed) was fully fleshed out, with the other characters used to offer differing ideas and obviously the above mentioned comic relief. Omar's brother for instance had such a minor part but raises questions around what he considers a true following of Islam, which he promotes as peaceful, but is then exposed as intrinsically sexist due to the way he practically locks his wife in a cupboard. That being said, Islam itself was to a large extent sidelined and the film much more overtly dealt with identification and senses of belonging for a demographic that has partial but not complete grips on the many angles of where its identity is created; this includes Barry (Nigel Lindsay), the Caucasian convert amongst the group.

Four Lions is easily funny enough to reach a very wide audience, where viewers will be left without answers and therefore forced to discuss these issues, which are too often brushed under the proverbial rug.

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