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Freebird

2/10

Stars: Gary Stretch, Geoff Bell, Phil Daniels, Peter Bowles, Caroline Hunnisett, Martin Serene, Marcus Gilbert, Jonathan Holmes, James Puddephatt, Ian Ralph

Director: Jon Ivay

I was stalling desperately while I tried to postpone the inevitable by telling my dentist (in my defence, I can say he did ask me about them) all about this week’s films. “Is it anything like Easy Rider?” he asked of this banal biker movie. ‘”Not at all” I told him, morose at the memory of Freebird, surrendered and opened wide.

What followed was considerably more entertaining than writer-director Ivay’s road comedy which finds London motorcycle couriers and dedicated stoners Stretch, Bell and Daniels taking to the road to find an elusive hippy and his cannabis farm in the Welsh mountains, despatched on their mission by (fortunately for him, a near-unrecognisable Bowles). After which the show turns into a combination of thudding comedy, vengeance-seeking biker gangs, a masked seven-foot-tall wrestler and a showdown involving an army of daftly dressed bikers, all seen through a haze of drugs.

On the credit side, the film is efficiently put together (Peter Wignall’s colour cinematography is a plus although the crediting of two editors for a relatively simple-styled movie suggests post-production might not have been a breeze. The actors are competent enough without raising much enthusiasm for performances predicated on their characters being stoned on magic mushrooms and other substances for much of the running time. If you’re a biker or a stoner or both, it might be just about passable, I suppose. If you're neither, forget it.

Alan Frank

UK 2008. UK Distributor: Delanic Films. Colour.
96 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 3, Swearing 3.

Review date: 31 Jan 2008