Rent Honest (2000)

Absolutely terrible in so many ways, however we are also in so bad it's good territory - Honest review by Timmy B

It is the year 2000. Guy Ritchie has turned the Cockney-geezer film genre into an all-conquering behemoth with Lock Stock & Snatch, leading to a slew of imitations and knock-offs. Most were atrocious, totally missing the point of why his films worked (a great script & characters alongside the violence/swearing,) and into that hall of infamy goes Honest, a film which made headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The Chase sisters are 3 East-End 'Landan gals' who live in a grimy, miserable house with their chronically depressed ex-boxer father and have no prospects in life, aside from becoming a gangster's mol. They decide to start committing robberies, disguising themselves as men & targeting jewellers. During one robbery, Gerry is caught by blue-eyed dreamer Daniel, who falls in love with her & becomes entangled with the sisters as they attempt to escape the gangsters and police.

This film defies so many metrics which you could measure it against. It is so badly made, scripted, shot & acted, you find yourself shaking your head and chuckling in disbelief. If I was to try to describe it, it is like the filmmakers watched Guy Ritchie's filmography, then put on Withnail and I and thought "What if we tried to combine the 2...?" The result is a total write-off, which is even stranger considering the writers are Dick Clement & Ian La Franais, who wrote some of the best British comedy of all time.

At the start of my review, I also hinted at this film's infamy, which was partly due to it starring 3 members of the girl group All Saints in their acting debuts, but mainly (whether this controversy was deliberately created by the media, the film's distributors or a combination of the two I don't know,) due to the singers appearing topless & in sex scenes, no doubt hoping this would guarantee it headlines as well as the #1 spot at the box office. Of the 3, only 2 of them disrobe, one of which is blink-and-you'll-miss-it, with the other unlikely to satisfy anyone who only watched the film wanting to see serious debauchery... Oh, and the film absolutely tanked at the box office, partly due to it having an 18 certificate & the vast majority of All Saints fans being in their mid-teens...

The tone of the film is completely off. There is liberal use of jump cuts, a drug-fuelled bender and supporting characters whose character traits are either screaming toff or psychotic Hispanic drug dealer (although he gets a jaw-droppingly offensive but hysterical line of dialogue when shouting at a parking warden.) The 3 actresses have swallowed so many acting pills, it is almost painful to watch. Their Cockney accents would make Dick Van Dyke embarrassed (even more crazy considering 1 of them is Camden born-and-bred,) and their line delivery ranges from passable if they were in a TV soap to sounding like they are reading the script to a 3 year old.

So having written all of this, why do I give it 2 stars? Because it is so bad, it becomes ironic & funny. At one point, the father, who hasn't got out of his chair for years, knocks out a man at least 30 years younger than him with a few punches. The sisters, who are meant to be master criminals, call each other by their real names & struggle to hold a gun the right way round. The police are so incompetent they believe that a guy who is loosely wearing a white jacket over his normal clothes is a doctor & allow him to wheel their suspect out of hospital. At one point, there is a scene which is meant to be an orgy but instead looks like a load of naturists were offered some lunch & expenses paid to go into a circus tent, strip off and look awkward. I mean the list just goes on.

But once you accept just how bad this film is, coupled with actors who are taking it seriously & making themselves look ridiculous in the process, there is a grim humour to be had from it.