Sex Lives of the Potato Men has comedians Johnny Vegas ( professional slob) and Mackenzie Crook (The Office) playing Birmingham potato delivery men who think of nothing but sex. They drive about in their van making up stories about the women they've had and the women they intend to have. Occasionally, one of them will settle for a dog or a pot of jam.
This is driving them to despair - Vegas just wants to get back with his wife, and Crook needs a break.
But despair it is. Despair all round. Potato Men is a Seventies smut comedy reworked for the lad-mag audience. If you don't like Jackass, you'll hate Potato Men. If you do like Jackass, you'll still hate it. However much it talks up its political incorrectness, this film cannot disguise its talentlessness, its lack of anything as florid as a joke.
Johnny Vegas has always given the impression of there not being any gap between his stage persona and himself - because his stage character is so overwrought, so depressed and distressed, he is seen as exciting, real.
But no producer (of television, radio and film) has yet got to grips with what he really is. At the moment, he looks like a busted flush who tempted us to think he was a bracing dose of truth and unvarnished reality. A British Lenny Bruce? He's not even Bruce Forsyth. The film is mirthless, worthless, toothless, useless.
Sex Lives Of The Potato Men
Cert: cert18
