Guest House Paradiso
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| Guest House Paradiso | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Ade Edmondson |
| Produced by | Phil McIntyre |
| Written by | Rik Mayall Ade Edmondson |
| Starring | Rik Mayall Adrian Edmondson Vincent Cassel Hélène Mahieu Bill Nighy Simon Pegg Fenella Fielding Lisa Palfrey Kate Ashfield Steve O'Donnell Sophia Myles Emma Pierson James D'Arcy Kate Loustau |
| Distributed by | Universal |
| Running time | 89 min. |
| Country |  United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £3,000,000 |
| IMDb profile | |
Guest House Paradiso is a 1999 comedy slapstick movie, starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, and directed by Edmondson. It is based on their comedy television series Bottom. The key difference in the characters is in their names: Rik's character, known as "Richard Richard" in the TV show, is here referred to as "Richard Twat" (although he regularly and angrily insists on the pronunciation "Thwaite"). Ade's character changes from "Edward Elizabeth Hitler" in the TV/Live show to "Edward Elizabeth Ndingo-m'baba".
The film was made at Shepperton studios and on location on the Isle of Wight.
[edit] Story
Richie (Rik Mayall) and Eddie (Ade Edmondson) run the worst guest house in the United Kingdom, neighbouring a nuclear power station (the plant is probably a parody of Sellafield as a radiation leak happens during the film). The chef is an idiotic drunkard (who, as it happens is also an illegal immigrant) who can't cook and eventually leaves due to his lack of payment, the guests are totally unsatisfied (one of them played by Bill Nighy) due to the lack of service such as waiters etc, and so they all decide to leave, except for "Mrs Foxfur" (Fenella Fielding) who lives there.
The most famous scene in the film, and the most violent, is Richie and Eddie's fight in the kitchen, from smacking each other's heads in the fridge door, Richie putting meat hooks up Eddie's nose and crashing him about the place, to Eddie crushing Richie's testicles with (appropriately) a nutcracker.
Life seems bleak for Eddie and Richie, but things seemingly improve with the arrival of the "Nice family", with Simon Pegg playing the father. Furthermore, the famous Italian actress "Gina Carbonara" (Helene Mahieu) comes to stay in the grotty house seeking safety from her ill-tempered fiancee Gino (Vincent Cassel), although her fiancee does eventually find her and arrives at the guest house near the end of the film.
Further on in the movie Richie finds some fish, which fell off a lorry heading away from the nuclear power station (the fish were contaminated by a radiation leak and were to be destroyed), whilst running over Eddie's head. Richie and Eddie don't realise that the fish were contaminated until they feed them to the guests. Hours later the guests are expelling huge quantities of green vomit at high velocity - all except for Gina Carbonara who is apparently the only guest who did not eat the fish. In the resulting chaos, Gina's violent boyfriend is propelled out of a window into the sea by a tidal wave of vomit from the rest of the guests and presumably drowned.
Agents from the secret service arrive to hush up the incident and give Eddie and Richie a suitcase containing ten million pounds in exchange for Richie's Porn and a second case containing new identities for the duo and Gina and first class tickets to the Caribbean, In exchange for Eddie's booze. They reluctantly accept, and head to the Caribbean
[edit] Trivia
- Featured an early appearance by Sophia Myles, who went on to star in Thunderbirds, Tristan & Isolde and Doctor Who (2006).
- Film debut for Simon Pegg, who would later star in the cult films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and similarly, one episode of Doctor Who.
- The movie contains a number of references to the TV and live show versions of Bottom. Notable examples are Richies's maniacal laughter in response to the guests' Mary Celeste joke and the slamming of Richie's head in the fridge door, both of which appeared in the TV version of Bottom. The idea of the residents vomitting violently near the end of the movie, was taken from the live show Bottom 3: Hooligans Island, when Richard eats a fish he found floating in the latrine only to vomit it out in a spray-like manner.
