Guest House Paradiso

Guest House Paradiso
Directed by Adrian Edmondson
Produced by Phil McIntyre
Written by Rik Mayall
Adrian Edmondson
Based on Bottom by Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall
Starring Rik Mayall
Adrian Edmondson
Music by Colin Towns
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date
 3 December 1999
Running time
 89 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Budget £3,000,000

Guest House Paradiso is a 1999 British slapstick black comedy film written by and starring comic duo Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, and directed by Edmondson—his directorial debut for a feature film.[1]

The film is semi-officially based on their comedy television series Bottom (in some territories, the DVD cover refers to it as The Bottom Movie). The key difference in the characters is in their surnames: Mayall's character, known as "Richard Richard" in the TV show, is here referred to as "Richard Twat" (although he angrily insists on the pronunciation "Thwaite"). Edmondson's character changes from "Edward Elizabeth Hitler" in the TV/live show to "Edward Elizabeth Ndingombaba". Despite this difference, both characters retain the same personalities as their TV counterparts. The film was made at Ealing Studios and on location on the Isle of Wight.

Plot

Richard "Richie" Richard (Rik Mayall) and Edward "Eddie" Elizabeth Ndingombaba Hitler (Adrian Edmondson) run the worst guest house in the United Kingdom. Their staff include a chef, an idiotic drunkard and an illegal immigrant who is unable to cook, and a waiter, whom Richie believes has checked into a psychiatric hospital. Both leave because of nonpayment for their employment, with the latter quitting because of the verbal abuse from his boss. The guests, including Mr Johnson (Bill Nighy), who reside in the pair's hotel are thoroughly dissatisfied by the poor service, and eventually decide to leave, except for Mrs Foxfur (Fenella Fielding) who lives there.

Life seems bleak for Eddie and Richie, until it seemingly improves with the arrival of the "Nice family", headed by Mr Nice (Simon Pegg), and the famous Italian actress Gina Carbonara (Hélène Mahieu). Gina's decision to stay in the grotty house is primarily down to her need to seek safety from her ill-tempered fiancé Gino Bolognese (Vincent Cassel). However, thanks to the pair putting her names in lights outside the guest house to attract more guests, Gino eventually finds her. Forced to cook meals for the guest, Richie comes across some fish which fell off a military lorry, heading away from the nearby nuclear power station. Unknown to both him and Eddie, the fish had been contaminated by a radiation leak due to the power station's poor maintenance.

Hours after serving the radioactive fish, everybody becomes violently ill, projectile-vomiting at high velocity and in huge quantities - all except for Gina Carbonara, the only guest who did not eat the fish. In an act of spontaneous solidarity, every guest projectile-vomits on Gino at once, forcing him backwards out through a window, and off a cliff edge into the ocean. Government agents arrive to hush up the incident and give Eddie and Richie £10 million pounds, first-class tickets to the Caribbean, and new identities for both them and Gina, in exchange for their silence over the leak. The three accept the offer and head to the Caribbean. In the film's final scene, Eddie winks to the camera after commenting "How lucky [Gino] was the only fatality. Otherwise there'd be a moral question-mark hanging over our escape."

Cast

Reception

Empire gave the film two stars out of five stating "The boys toil incredibly hard to make the whole thing work and, while there are some hilarious moments, it is far too patchy for a full feature film."[2]

References

  1. ↑ "Guest House Paradiso". The New York Times.
  2. ↑ "Guest House Paradiso". Empire.
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