Cert – 12, Run-time – 1 hour 34 minutes, Director – Chris Foggin
Egotistical actor Bradley Mack (Kiefer Sutherland) is stuck doing tired action sequels until the call to do theatre in the UK comes in, only for him to discover it’s a small town panto.
For those unaware of the UK tradition of panto, each December (and into January) theatres across the country will dial the camp up to 11 for tongue-in-cheek productions of often fairy tales with slightly raunchy gags and plenty of audience participation (mention panto and you’ll likely be met with a ‘oh yes it is, oh no it isn’t’). The cast of productions in your local town theatre will often be led by musical stars now doing reunion circuits, daytime TV personalities and the occasional comic. It’s often jokingly referred to as the circuit you go to when your career is on the decline. It’s also where action star Bradley Mack (Kiefer Sutherland) finds himself after accepting a theatre gig in the UK, having finished production on the nth sequel in a tiring franchise.
Having slept the whole taxi ride to the village of Stoneford, Mack finds that he can’t get out of the show that he thought would be Macbeth at the Globe; having to pay the substantial losses the show would face if he weren’t to appear as Buttons in Cinderella. His egotism and unwillingness to properly participate, alongside acting for film rather than stage, causes frustrations for the cast, director (Meera Syal) and dance director Jill (Rebel Wilson, with truly dodgy northern English accent to match a performance of someone who seems to have only been told the rough details of what panto is).
Jason Manford and Asim Chaudhry appear as seeming comic relief within the comic relief, portraying the actors playing the ugly sisters in the production. Often making the same jokes off stage that they would on, and truly being in the panto spirit. They raise an occasional chuckle thanks to their display of characters, and the film, slightly relaxing and embracing the panto spirit and its lightness rather than trying to sentimentalise it as the rest of the film does. A scene that sees Sutherland perform It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year in the performance space, gradually bringing other cast members into his growing song and dance routine, is a generally calm but enjoyable sequence that acts as one of the film’s unforced festive highlights.
Where things falter are in the treading of cliché throughout the surrounding narrative. From difficult family relationships, Brad wants to see his daughter (Matilda Firth) who lives in London with his ex-wife (Alice Eve) and her partner (James Lance), both of whom see panto as low-form humour, while Jill, whose daughter is in the production, battles her ex (the second festive outing this year after Christmas Karma, and third film of 2025, for Danny Dyer) who also wants his child to spend Christmas with him in London. Such strands seeing the adults bickering and facing their personal familial issues raise a lot of familiarity and such moments simply feel crowbarred in to the surrounding elements, to force home the saccharine beats when things start to wrap up.
While there are some aforementioned chuckles there are plenty that are also laboured and falter simply because of how familiar and overdone they feel. Contrasting with the aims and surroundings of panto by the film seemingly not noticing its own obviousness. It causes Tinsel Town to stumble as a film that could be perfectly fine and amusing if it wasn’t for it appearing to miss its own pushed point and appearing more overdone than sentimental and little proper embracing of the panto spirit it wants to capture.
When it lets loose and embraces the panto spirit Tinsel Town is a perfectly enjoyable festive flick, however as its various plot strands push an overdone sentimentality they counter that feeling and cause the laughs and overall film to falter.
Just A Little Bit Random 