Churchill: The Hollywood Years review

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Back in the '80s, Channel Four's Comic Strip Presents series pilloried the great and good by imagining them played by Hollywood megastars: Al Pacino as Arthur Scargill or Charles Bronson as Ken Livingstone. Now Strip svengali Peter Richardson's at it again, retooling Winston Churchill in the buffed-up, gun-toting, cigar-chomping form of Christian Slater. Laugh? You'll never start.

Surrounding his slumming star with a rogue's gallery of gurning British comics (Vic'n'Bob, Harry Enfield, The Office's Mackenzie Crook), Richardson shoots for Carry On-style anarchy but misses by a country mile. Neve Campbell enters into the spirit of the enterprise as a young Queen Elizabeth, but the rest of the cast just look embarrassed by the blitz imploding around them.

What plot there is revolves around a dumb conspiracy to install Hitler (Antony Sher) as King. Like everything else though, it's too amateurish to raise even so much as a titter.

The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine. 

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