Fat Slags

Has it come to this?

Fat Slags is a crass, unfunny embarrassment, from which no one emerges with credit. It's only saving grace is that, perversely, it should demonstrate the British public's fundamental good taste, when no one goes to see it.

Based on a Viz comic strip, in which two Northern women spend their time drinking, fighting and shagging, the film adds the semblance of a storyline: the slags become a media sensation when an American billionaire decides to promote them as celebrities.

The one running gag is that Northern women are fat, coarse and sexually voracious. Thus we get treated to scenes of giant kebabs, breast baring and a penis being bitten off. The message couldn't be clearer; this might as well have been called Women Terrify Us.

The filmmakers clearly knew this was a turkey quite early on, as the budget seems to have been slashed mid-shoot. The production values get progressively worse, which is some feat given the dire opening, and the soundtrack unashamedly recycles the same irrelevant songs.

The producers's despair is most evident in the editing, where huge chunks of plot have been crudely torn out, leaving the film's resolution incomprehensible, yet none-the-less welcome. It does beg an intriguing question: given the dreadfulness of what was left in, how bad must the deleted scenes have been?