Mindhorn (2016)

It is not often I get to say this in a review. I could see my house in this film, well my childhood home.

Mindhorn was a hit 1980s television show set in the Isle of Man starring Richard Thorncroft. It was basically Bergerac with a bionic eye.

Now Thorncroft after a drunken rant on the Wogan show is washed up and unemployed. His agent has not been able to find work for him for years.

However a deranged Manx criminal Paul Melly, wanted for murder demands he will only talk to Detective Mindhorn and Thorncroft returns to the island hoping the publicity will get him work and unite with his ex star who was also his ex wife.

A promising premise with cameos from Kenneth Branagh and Simon Callow playing themselves and Steve Coogan playing a side character in the Mindhorn series who now has his own spin off show.

The problem is the movie is too uneven, the plot does not hang together well, it was not that amusing even dull at times. The film is just really a long sketch and really not too far from the Alan Partridge film Alpha Papa which also starred Coogan.

However it is nice to see the Isle of Man play itself when in other films it is used to portray other locations.

Fmovies: From the start it looks like bit of British take on the Anchorman but as the movie progresses it brings out its distinction. The plot gets a bit too straight forward near the end but the movie never ceases to charm the laughter out of the viewers. I absolutely loved it. Mindhorn is one of the best comedy movies in the past 5+ years much better than big Hollywood budgets are pathetically struggling to achieve lately.

"Mindthorn" is one of the newest Netflix productions to be released. However, it is very unusual in that it has a mostly British cast and it was filmed on the Isle of ManÂ…an unusual location for a Netflix film, I know. In fact, most people outside the United Kingdom probably have no idea where the Isle of Man is or if it exists at all! I assure you, it does and the self-governing island is hope to tailless cats and motorcycle racing!

When the story begins, you learn that back in the late 1980s there was a British television series called "Mindthorn". It was about some bizarre private detective with a cybernetic eye who went on adventures and solved crimes. The problem is that today, a crazed maniac believes that the show was completely real and is demanding the police let him speak to Mindthorn. As for the actor who played the title character, Richard Thorncroft (Julian Barrett) is a complete mess and can only find work doing commercials for compression socks and adult bladder protection these days! He hopes that by traveling to the island that he'll become a hero and revive his stalled career. But there is one serious problemÂ….Thorncroft is a complete jerkÂ…and a dumb one at that. He manages to alienate just about everyone he meets and you cannot help but hate himÂ….but there is far, far more to the story.

Up to the point I've described, the film is a bit hard to take because Thorncroft is such a big jerkÂ….a thorough and complete jerk. Fortunately, the second half of the film improves tremendously and becomes rather funnyÂ…especially when he ends up teaming up with a guy who calls himself 'the Kestrel'. The film takes a definite turn towards the weird as well as the heroic and actually is very unique and worth seeing.

This film is clearly one that I urge you to keep watchingÂ…even with a slow start. My wife cringed repeatedly and found Thorncroft's character so annoying and awful she wanted to stop watching. As for me, I have a higher threshold for the embarrassing and weird and really enjoyed the film. It's uneven, of course, but a film that ends on a very high note. Hopefully, we'll see more stuff like this from Netflix.

Mindhorn fmovies. Imagine if you will,what would have come along if the British producers of Bergerac or The Persuaders or the Professionals had added that bit of Imaginative American teenage sci-fi appeal from Night rider, or the Six Million Dollar man. The result would have been MINDHORN. Isle of Man detective Mindhorn lost his real eye in some brief special forces career, or some such usual drivel, and was given a special cybernetic lie detecting one by goodness knows who and then rather than using it to better mankind in special government service answering to chief Ernest Borgenine or David Doyle , as he would have in an American version he decided to return to the Isle of man and become a detective. Imagine further more that the star of this show became a big "I AM" for a while ( not at all like William Shatner) thinking he was too big for his own show and managed to alienate most of his co-stars and went off to Hollywood to become a star and. . . . .Didn't. So there is the back story on wacky British comedy Mindhorn; and where those original protagonists are now and how they would react when thrown back together is the meat of the situational and sometimes slapstick comedy that ensues. The plot is really just a vehicle to make that happen but for those of you that think it's really important ( maybe you have Austrian blood in you and Tut if someone crosses the road when the little red Man is lit even when there isn't a car in sight ) then, there is one, it envolves a young man with special educational needs, suspected of a crime, who believes Mindhorn was a true life drama and will only speak to detective Mindhorn. He therefore has to be brought back to the island who's thespians and population alike he has alienated by his pretentious and high handed past behaviour in order to bring the suspect in. His career having gone no where, the actor in question Richard Thorncroft played by co writer Julian Barrat is desperate for some "profile" and doesn't take a lot of persuasion to put the bionic eye-patch back on. It's not a truly original comedic genre, following closely in the footsteps of David Brent and Alan Partridge without being quite as numbingly cringeworthy but does add in a good deal more sight gaggery and actual joke jokes until there's really something for everyone. It may be if you are an Office fan this will be nowhere near hard core embarrassing enough for you and if you're a big Last of the Summer Wine conservative sleepy locals react to odd-balls stuff this will be far too harsh in places, I have appreciated both and this has elements of both in it. Simon Farnaby, or the Stupid Deaths man as my son calls him gives an "untrustworthy foreigner" performance of the type British actors in America have made their own to the point of there having been absolutely no suspense in a US action suspense film for over 20 years ( IT'S THE British GUY!!!) I laughed a lot in this but deliberately watched it with friends of both sexes all in our late 40's and 50's feeling it would benefit from that shared knowledge of the programmes and attitudes of the time and if did communal viewing builds the laughs as the film progressess, a couple of throwaway sexist lines are breathtakingly funny, but I know some of my ex-pupils have found it excellent as well, The plot is silly and ridiculous so if that is really important to you you'd be better off not watching than doing so and then boring the rest of us telling us how you can't understand how we didn't spot all the holes

In the 1980s Richard Thorncroft found fame as Mindhorn, the Manx detective with an artificial eye that could literally see the truth. After three series he decided it was time to head to Hollywood, burning his bridges as he goes. Twenty five years later he is living in a flat in London and his only acting work has been the occasional advert. Now a deranged murder suspect, self-dubbed 'The Kestrel' is saying he will only talk to Detective Mindhorn; this leads to his return to the Isle of Man. Here he is both caught up in the hunt for the killer as well as meeting former colleagues who went on to live more successful lives than him.

If you are looking for anything serious you will definitely be disappointed but if you like the idea of a mild spoof of '80s UK detective shows this is worth watching. As others have said 'Mindhorn', the TV show, was clearly 'Bergerac' with a bionic eye... something which the film constantly acknowledges with an ongoing joke about Thorncroft losing roles to John 'Bergerac' Nettles. Most of the humour comes from the Richard Thorncroft character; he is almost a copy of Alan Partridge at times... most notably in scenes featuring Steve Coogan as a secondary character in 'Mindhorn' who left for a far more successful spin-off series. The plot in many ways mirrors the style on an '80s TV show as does the acting; something I'm sure was deliberate. The cast does a solid job with just about everybody looking more than a little ridiculous at times. The ending is inevitably rather cheesy but that fitted in with the general feel of the film. Overall I certainly wouldn't say this is a must see but would still recommend it to anybody who enjoys slightly cheesy silliness.

It is very rare now a days that you get to see a comedy film with out any adult language or those creepy scenes and Mindhorn is really an exception proving once again hat you do need a good story.I personally loved and liked this movie and i recommend it everyone who is interested in a good comedy watchable with friends.