And now, quite literally, a load of opinions that are not mine:
thelondonpaper (sic) had a video interview with Mitchell and Webb on its (web)site the other day… some of it is repeated below as text:
From celebrated cult comedy Peep Show to stage illusionists, David Mitchell and Robert Webb (otherwise known as flatmates Mark and Jeremy, or “those guys from the Mac ads”) make their big-screen splash with Magicians. Riffing on their comedy-duo personas, they star as a magic double-act who become rivals, but reunite for one last shot at the big time.
The Illusionist, The Prestige and now you: what is it about cinema and stage magicians?
Webb: Magicians are inevitably people who’ve spent a lot of time in their bedrooms, practising coin manipulation and how to flourish a deck of cards, rather than talking to people. So they’re always going to be a bit eccentric.
Mitchell: Magic is inherently funny. And funnier than it is magical really. I haven’t seen The Prestige – but they seem to be quite big and grand and mystical. But our experience of the magic world is that it’s actually quite small, nerdy and full of little rivalries.
Were you taught real tricks? Who was better?
Webb: I was supposed to learn how to roll a coin nicely across my fingers and I completely failed. The director told me to give up.
Mitchell: I probably practised my trick for about an hour and a half a day for a week.
Webb: There’s a scene where I have to throw a basketball backwards and get it in a hoop, and I practised that for three hours in a hotel room.
Mitchell: How did you know if you’d succeeded?
Webb: By turning around and having a look – really quickly. It was murder on the old back.
Are you comfortable dipping into the mainstream now?
Mitchell: I’ve never really been very conscious what streams things are in. I think they just have to judge things on if you think they’re funny.
You’re a comic double-act and you’re playing a magical double-act in the film. People are going to forget you have first names, aren’t they?
Mitchell: I think if people know one of your names, then that’s a start. I don’t think people will not know our first names because they’ve forgotten them, so much as that they never knew them.
Webb: Yeah, people will start calling me “And Webb”. “Hello And Webb!”
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They also reviewed Magicians:
Review: Magicians
by Stuart McGurk. Friday, May 18 2007
**1/2 Cert: 15, 90 mins
Director: Andrew O’Connor
Starring: David Mitchell, Robert Webb, Jessica Stevenson
Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige starred Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as rival stage magicians performing earth-stopping stunts in a darkly decadent Victorian London, where power-plays, philosophical brow furrowers and death-dealing drama were all conjured from a blood-feud after one of their partners is accidentally asphyxiated. Magicians, on the other hand, features the Peep Show “el dude” brothers Robert Webb and David Mitchell – otherwise known as Mac and PC– as rival stage magicians performing rabbit-in-a-hat tricks in Jersey, where knob gags, wacky names and deathly-silent comedy are all conjured – as if by magic! – via two of the most talented comedy actors of their generation. Oh, and one of their wives is bumped off early on too – but Peep Show fans will probably be jealous of her escape. The wife in question is the partner of Harry (Mark-from-Peep-Show, an ever fastidious Mitchell), who had been performing the disappearing penis trick with Karl (Jeremy-from-Peep-Show, the ever logic-subverting Webb).
Previously a successful duo, the pair soon disband after the unlucky wife is the victim of a trick gone wrong. They take (very) odd-jobs – performing unwanted stunts as a supermarket salesman (Mitchell) and a clueless TV medium (Webb). But both miss the limelight – so they agree to bury the hatchet for a one-time-only comeback at a magic competition. Sigh. For a much-anticipated film, this is a huge let-down: the magic equivalent of doing the death-saw stunt with a rubber mallet. Not only does it lack the eclectic off-key cruelty and spot-on zingers of the much-revered Peep Show (it’s from the same writers, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, but this is clearly watered-down stuff), it also has a plot that’s as obvious as the coin-behind-the-ear trick.
It’s so frustrating. Like seemingly every Brit-com at the moment, they couldn’t resist the urge to cram as many recognisable faces in as possible – from Spaced’s Jessica Stevenson as Mitchell’s zany new assistant to The Thick Of It’s Peter Capaldi as the competition’s shouty compere. But with such talent on display, it only makes you mourn what could have been, and reinforce this as a family TV comedy awkwardly dragged into the big time. It’s not totally without charm – and still has the odd good line (“It was the usual,” says Mitchell, explaining his widower status. “Decapitation…. by magic”), but those expecting anything else will be sorely disappointed.
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From The Times May 17, 2007 Dominic Maxwell :
Losing their magic touch?
Peep Show’s Mitchell and Webb graduate to the big screen as a pair of magicians. Our correspondent wonders if their tricks are sharp enough
They are, as the posters put it, “the makers of Peep Show” – the funniest, most merciless British sitcom around. But Robert Mitchell and David Webb and the writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain are under no illusions about the challenge they face with their first film together, Magicians. The track record for British film comedies is not good. Take Richard Curtis and Simon Pegg out of the picture and it’s atrocious. Sitcoms, sometimes, we can do. But take the script to 90 minutes and, somehow, we almost always flunk it. “There’s a little hump of expectations after Hot Fuzz this year,” says Armstrong, “but on the whole people don’t expect much from British comedies.”
Well, first the bad news: Magicians doesn’t have the brio (or great gags), let alone the marketability, of a Bridget Jones. Two magicians, Harry (Mitchell) and Karl (Webb), fall out, fall on hard times and then compete against each other for 20 grand in a magic competition in Jersey. In plot terms it’s a bit like Christopher Nolan’s recent Victorian magic epic The Prestige, and even more like gloriously silly Ben Stiller/Will Ferrell mock-epics such as Zoolander or Anchorman. In execution, though, it’s drier, more English, and actually more restrained than the cheerily vicious Peep Show.
But the film still has fun with protagonists that, yes, aren’t all that different from Peep Show’s angsty Mark and cocky Jeremy. Mitchell (the posher, podgier one) is unapologetic about that: “There’s a lot of comedy in angsty, posh, worried people,” he says, “and I’m happy to mine that seam while I’ve got the chance.”
But he admits that British films are caught in a vicious circle of low expectations and low confidence. “The advantage Hollywood has,” he says, “is that it can put Ben Stiller in something and that means the worst that it will go is that quite a lot of people see it. It would be great if there were an automatic audience for British comedy films in the way that there’s an automatic audience for television comedy. Because that gives confidence, and the British film industry could do with confidence.”
Webb was convinced that it would never get made anyway – or if it did, the parts would end up with Ant and Dec. “We thought, ‘it’s a British film, it’s never going to get made but it’s nice to talk about’.” But straight after finishing their BBC Two sketch show last summer they found themselves in two weeks of rehearsals with the director Andrew O’Connor followed by a no-frills five weeks of filming in London, Nottingham and Skegness (deputising for Jersey).
Since then, they’ve played a national tour, made the current Peep Show series, written and recorded new shows for radio, got married (Webb), become a panel-show star (Mitchell), and – oh yes – advertised some computers. Does being Britain’s most visible poster boys make them an easier sell as film stars? Hmm. They greet mention of their Apple Mac campaign with a forward defensive. “It’s part of the business,” says Mitchell, switching into lawyerly mode. “Comedians do ads. It’s a very uncertain business we’re in; ads pay very well. It’s a good product we’re advertising, they’re not an immoral company.”
Mitchell is miffed by criticism of the campaign “by people who don’t have to make their living as freelance comedians”. But isn’t any negative reaction because people are attached to them – or to their characters, anyway – and bristle at the thought that they are just commodities? “It’s not a completely black and white area,” Webb concedes. “If there are people who feel a bit let down, I’d want to pat them on the shoulder but also tell them to think a bit harder about what it is they’re feeling let down about.” “Yes,” Mitchell agrees, “maybe they should invest a bit less in fictional characters! We’re glad you like the show,” says Webb, “but they are not your friends really!”
Armstrong and Bain admit that they found writing a feature-length script far harder than their usual 23 minutes. It’s a funny film, I suggest, but it does sink a bit in the middle. “I suppose, to be honest, most films sink a bit in the middle,” says Mitchell. “It’s when you’re first aware you need a wee, but before the exciting bit,” Webb adds. “The films that don’t do that are probably my favouite films of all time,” says Mitchell. “So we’ll take ‘funny film that sinks a bit in the middle’.”
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… and finally, from The Guardian:
Magicians (Cert 15)
Phelim O’Neill
Friday May 18, 2007
The Guardian
Peep Show the sequel … Magicians
Mitchell and Webb don’t stray too far from their Peep Show characters in their movie outing, although they do tone them down. They play a pair of magicians who’ve spent the last four years apart following an onstage fatality. The promise of a cash prize at a magician’s competition in Jersey brings them back together. There’s not much more to it than that. We’re quite used to film comedies having a weak plot: that usually leaves more room to place gags, but this one still feels rather empty. It’s not without a few laughs and just about every supporting role is filled by a familiar(ish) face from UK comedy, although few are fully exploited. O’Connor’s direction has absolutely zero visual flair, making the performers’ transition from television to film rather pointless.
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