What a shambles

What a shambles

Undated Film Still Handout from Gambit. Pictured: Harry Deane (COLIN FIRTH) and PJ Puznowski (CAMERON DIAZ). See PA Feature FILM Film Reviews. Picture credit should read: PA Photo/Momentum Pictures. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature FILM Film Reviews.

Published on 25/11/2012 08:00

Gambit (12A, 89 mins) Comedy/Romance Colin Firth, Cameron Diaz, Alan Rickman, Tom Courtney, Stanley Tucci, Cloris Leachman  Director: Michael Hoffman Released: Wednesday November 21

 Michael Hoffman’s remake of the 1966 screwball caper about a cat burglar and showgirl who plan an elaborate heist has impeccable credentials.

Screenwriters Joel and Ethan Coen have Oscars on the mantelpiece for Fargo and No Country For Old Men, and leading man Colin Firth deservedly collected a golden statuette for his exemplary work in The King’s Speech.

Co-star Tom Courtenay was twice shortlisted for Hollywood’s top honour for Doctor Zhivago and The Dresser, while Hoffman himself guided Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer to Oscar nominations in 2009 for the handsome historical drama The Last Station.

With so much talent in front of and behind the camera, what could possibly go wrong?

Everything, it seems, because Hoffman’s reworking is an unmitigated mess.

Firth loses his trousers for a protracted centrepiece sequence at the luxurious five-star Savoy hotel in London but Gambit loses its way well before then, wheezing and spluttering from one clumsy gag to the next.

Gambit is a shambles.

We laugh out of pity and embarrassment as the script blunders from dream sequences that suggest Harry might actually pull off his hare-brained heist to Austin Powers-style nudity that protects Rickman’s modesty with a generously proportioned paperweight.

The only award Firth will be collecting is a dreaded Razzie, which salutes the worst in Hollywood film-making.

“This is absurd,” despairs Firth, standing half naked on the Savoy hotel ledge as he stares down on passing black cabs.

You said it, Colin.

n Swearing, No Sex, Violence n Rating: 4/10 

Lifestyle

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Catch it on camera

Top stories

Lifestyle