As someone who grew up on classic spoof films like Airplane!, Top Secret!, The Naked Gun, and Hot Shots!, I’ve found that the genre largely lost its spark from the 1990s onward. The original Scary Movie stands as a rare exception, while last year’s The Naked Gun reboot was, regrettably, painfully unfunny. Against that backdrop, Jim O’Hanlon’s Fackham Hall emerges as a genuine surprise—and quite possibly the funniest spoof feature in decades.
The screenplay boasts multiple contributors, including comedian Jimmy Carr, one of the sharpest comedic voices working today, and his influence is felt throughout. I initially passed on seeing the film theatrically, largely because I had little interest in the material being spoofed. I’m not a fan of period dramas, and I’ve never watched Downton Abbey in any form. However, after receiving the Blu-ray for review, I decided to give it a chance—and was genuinely surprised by how often it made me laugh, or at the very least, chuckle.
Fackham Hall (pronounced by its characters as “Fack-em-all”) has been owned by the Davenport family for generations, but the estate faces an uncertain future. Lord Davenport (Damian Lewis) has no surviving male heirs, and when his daughter Poppy (Emma Laird) walks out on her wedding to her cousin Archibald (Tom Felton), the family risks losing their ancestral home. The only way to keep the estate in the family is through marriage, and with Poppy out of the picture, Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston) turns her attention to her other daughter, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie). Rose, however, has no desire to marry Archibald, as her heart belongs to Fackham Hall’s new employee, Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe). Adding to the chaos, the film also takes aim at Agatha Christie–style mysteries when Inspector Watt (Tom Goodman-Hill) arrives to investigate a murder at the sprawling estate.
As with any effective spoof, the filmmakers bombard the audience with visual gags and rapid-fire jokes. The key question, of course, is how many of them land. While Fackham Hall doesn’t quite reach the hit rate of the genre’s all-time greats, enough of its jokes connect to make it an easy recommendation for comedy fans—especially those craving a smart, energetic throwback to the golden age of spoof filmmaking.
By: Marc Ferman
