Kill Keith Review

Oddity alert! Sound the quirky alarm! Horror-comedy meets breakfast TV in this low budget gurn-a-thon, which comes across as some sort of unholy mash-up of Morning Glory and Seven.Kill Keith stars Marc Pickering as Danny, a runner on a breakfast programme, who is in love with its charming presenter Dawn (Susannah Fielding – 4.3.2.1., Doctor Who, Pete Versus Life) and wishes to replace the arrogant co-host Cliff (Easter) at her side on the sofa. The programme is called ‘The Crack of Dawn’, in one of the film’s slightly more sophisticated (really) if smuttier jokes.

Unfortunately for Dawn and daytime TV presenters everywhere, the so-called Breakfast Cereal Killer (again, indicative of the level of humour) is at large, bumping off C-list celebs in breakfast-themed ways. Tony Blackburn, Joe Pasquale, Keith Chegwin (who all play versions of themselves); no one is safe. Can Danny discover the identity of the murderer in time to save his beloved?

I wanted to like Kill Keith, truly I did. It’s kind of original, it was made for no money, the celebrities and regular actors play along gamely and its heart is in the right place. Unfortunately, it’s painfully unfunny, lacks strong ideas and even at ninety minutes, feels like a slog. Rather than keeping the plot tight and to the point, the script is oversaturated with weak subplots that really feel like they’ve been shoehorned in to make up the running time. As indicated above, the level of humour is juvenile at best – there’s nothing wrong with that as such, but it wears thin when there’s nothing cleverer than that in the whole film.

And at times, it’s just too weird for its own good. Danny is prone to flights of fantasy that see him acting out situations in different genres (noir, action, superhero, etc), a trick used in Spaced(among others). It’s an idea, sure, and they’re executed fairly well, but they’re not actually funny and ultimately, there’s no real point to them. Additionally, Tony Blackburn doesn’t play ‘himself’ as such, rather his own double. The ‘real’ Tony Blackburn is played by some guy that looks about fourteen. You can see how that could be funny in theory, but in practice it’s just odd. It’s very much a case of throwing things to the wall and seeing what sticks.

In short – it’s a mess. Writer and director Andy Thompson would do better keep his ideas – which individually aren’t bad – simpler and try to stick to one or two good ones rather than lots of substandard ones in the same film at least. But then, perhaps I’m a lone voice – most of the other folks in the screening seemed to be chuckling away fairly regularly. Personally, I’d say the film would only really be enjoyable, perhaps, if you were to watch it at about 2am whilst heroically drunk, stoned or otherwise inebriated (and there is an audience for that). Despite my goodwill towards it, I must be honest and that’s as good a recommendation as it’s going to get.