Fackham Hall – This Rapid-Fire, Witty Parody of Downton Abbey That's Refreshingly Throwaway.
It could be the sense of end times around us: subsequent to a lengthy span of dormancy, the spoof is staging a comeback. The past few months witnessed the re-emergence of this unserious film style, which, at its best, lampoons the grandiosity of excessively solemn genre with a torrent of exaggerated stereotypes, physical comedy, and dumb-brilliant double entendres.
Frivolous times, it seems, beget deliberately shallow, gag-packed, pleasantly insubstantial entertainment.
The Newest Entry in This Silly Wave
The most recent of these silly send-ups arrives as Fackham Hall, a takeoff on the British period drama that pokes fun at the highly satirizable pretensions of gilded British period dramas. The screenplay comes from British-Irish comedian Jimmy Carr and overseen by Jim O'Hanlon, the feature has plenty of material to mine and wastes none of it.
Opening on a ludicrous start and culminating in a ludicrous finish, this entertaining upper-class adventure fills each of its runtime with puns and routines ranging from the childish to the genuinely funny.
A Send-Up of Aristocrats and Servants
In the vein of Downton, Fackham Hall offers a caricature of overly dignified the nobility and excessively servile servants. The plot focuses on the hapless Lord Davenport (brought to life by a delightfully mannered Damian Lewis) and his literature-hating wife, Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston). Having lost their four sons in a series of calamitous events, their hopes fall upon securing unions for their offspring.
One daughter, Poppy (Emma Laird), has achieved the family goal of betrothal to the appropriate kinsman, Archibald (a perfectly smarmy Tom Felton). But after she withdraws, the pressure falls upon the unmarried elder sister, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie), described as an old maid at 23 and and holds dangerously modern notions about female autonomy.
Its Laughs Lands Most Effectively
The film fares much better when satirizing the suffocating social constraints imposed on Edwardian-era females – an area often mined for self-serious drama. The stereotype of idealized ladylike behavior offers the richest punching bags.
The plot, as is fitting for a deliberately silly spoof, is of lesser importance to the gags. Carr serves them up maintaining a pleasantly funny pace. Included is a murder, an incompetent investigation, and an illicit love affair featuring the plucky pickpocket Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) and Rose.
Limitations and Frivolous Amusement
It's all for harmless amusement, however, this approach comes with constraints. The heightened foolishness inherent to parody might grate after a while, and the entertainment value for this specific type runs out somewhere between a skit and feature.
Eventually, audiences could long to retreat to a realm of (very slight) reason. Nevertheless, it's necessary to respect a genuine dedication to the craft. In an age where we might to entertain ourselves unto oblivion, we might as well find the humor in it.
