Sightseers

Anyone who has watched an episode of Top Gear will know about the evils of caravans, and of course Mr Bean is an object lesson in the dangers of the socially awkward. Dial down the social awkwardness to slightly lower than Ricky Gervais in The Office and you have Tina and Chris. Chris owns the caravan and is keen to get some alone time with his new girlfriend and see the sights of Yorkshire. Tina is excited to have a boyfriend and grasp at the chance to escape from her suffocating mother. Chris is not only interested in trams and innovative caravans, he has a low tolerance for loutish behaviour and snobbery. Tina becomes suspicious of the coincidental deaths that follow them and keen to impress her boyfriend joins in the killing spree. Such one-upmanship is not healthy for the bystanders and eventually takes its toll on the happy couple to a sound track dominated by Tainted Love.

Sightseers follows a simple recipe of humour and shock. Unfortunately there is only enough good material for a 50-60 minutes film (or TV drama). So by the end of 95 minutes the shocks were wearing a bit thin and the gaps between jokes were getting tedious. That said Chris voiced everyone's darkest desire when he whined "I just want to be feared and respected. Is that too much to ask?".

Ian's rating 2/5 Anne's rating 2/5

Sightseers was preceded by a short film called Bear about a woman who wakes up on her birthday and thinks her boyfriend has forgotten it and she heads out on her mountain bike. Meanwhile her boyfriend has planned a surprise picnic, which doesn't go as planned. The ending would seem more realistic if the film was set in a country with bears rather than Australia!