Big Liam can’t come quickly enough for those unfortunate enough to find themselves watching Seize Them!
SEIZE THEM! is one of those curious British comedies that emerge every once in a while that make you pause to take stock and ask yourself “Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?”
When the reign of spoiled and cruel Queen Dagan (Aimee Lou Wood) is brought to an abrupt end by a peasant uprising led by Humble Joan (Nicola Coughlan), faithful servant Shulmay (Lolly Adefope) helps the deposed despot to flee. As they travel across the country, hunted and in search of allies, accompanied by redoubtable shit shoveller Bobic (Nick Frost), Queen Dagan finds herself forced to confront some unexpected truths.
There’s something depressing about seeing the Elmlea of British Comedy congealing in this curdled attempt at historic comedy which, if nothing else, demonstrates that the original HORRIBLE HISTORIES gang really had something special that’s not at all easy to replicate.
Leadenly acted, clumsily plotted and witlessly scripted, it’s hard to know where to place the bulk of the blame for this excessively foul-mouthed misfire. Such is the dreary and ploddingly puerile of the script that you might imagine the cast would have been given free reign by director XXXX to adlib and try to inject some actual wit into proceedings but any attempts at spontaneity seem to take the form of gratuitously repetitive swearing – an understandable fourth-wall breaking cry for help from the cast as they realise the unbelievably poor shitshow they’ve signed up for. You have to wonder how many agents were released after inking this deal.
The bad language is, in the end, the most inexplicable decision made in this confection of bad creative choices: it immediately excludes potentially the only audience who would possibly have embraced this garbage: the under-10s. Had SEIZE THEM! Dialled down the language and cranked up the slapstick silliness, it might just have worked but as it stands, you can’t just spray a substandard HORRIBLE HISTORIES knock-off with profane verbal diarrhoea and call it an adult comedy.
Everyone involved in this could and should have done better, but in the end it’s the audience that suffered the most.