Hostage situation. Comedy. That is about as oxymoronic as you can get, and yet it is what we get in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. Steve Coogan's alter-ego gets another outing in this full-length movie. And let's face it: Alan Partridge is all ego and no alter.
Alan, now well into middle-age and with a broken marriage and the better part of his career behind him, is working as a DJ for a regional radio station in England. When the station is taken over by new management and about to have its image overhauled, staff are worried about redundancies. Alan, fearing for his future employment, betrays one of his fellow workers (Pat Farrell) to management, who is then summarily dismissed. Arriving at work the following day, Alan blithely walks into a hostage situation - Pat, armed with a shotgun, has taken over the station and imprisoned his ex-colleagues. Alan soon becomes both a police negotiator and a confidant to the sleep-deprived Pat. As the crisis progresses, Alan finds a renewed celebrity as the public face of the siege and his ego duly takes over. Things can only get worse.
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa is an entertaining and amusing movie. Coogan is surrounded by a wonderful supporting cast, notably Colm Meaney as the tragic Pat and Felicity Montagu as Alan's long-suffering P.A Lynn. The action alternates skillfully from farce to pathos and back to farce again as each scene is played out. Sufficient space is allowed for the development of the key characters in their interaction with each other so that their humanity is allowed to shine out over the comedic elements of the story.
All up, this is a fine comedy movie with many modern sensitivities included in its story telling. Do the good end happily and the bad unhappily? Watch it and see.
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