Review - Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie

I am not sure quite why Saunders chose to make this film as it is clearly way past its peak and although she and Lumley are as brilliant as ever in their roles there is a feeling they are sleepwalking their way through them; they even on occasion throw out a few greatest hits moments. The thing is, due to re-runs and box sets, these are not as funny as they should be as familiarity alongside predictability are the curse of any comedy.

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie review

Some were trepidatious about this belated big-screen outing for the fashionista sitcom. In fact, post-referendum, the timing couldn't be better ... and neither could Joanna Lumley.

'Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie': Review

"All I ever wanted was not to be fat and old!" cries PR guru and bad gran Edina Monsoon, bewailing the time when "the zeitgeist used to run right through me". As her best friend Patsy injects herself with Botox, flips through Tinder and quaffs Chanel No 5 because they've run out of Bolly, it's clear that writer/star Jennifer Saunders hasn't lost her touch over the quarter century since these characters were first conceived for TV.

Absolutely Fabulous - The Movie: review

Ab Fab is truly back, fatter and shinier than ever! A bit of sparkle in these bleak times. So, Jennifer Saunders I am obliged to say: cheers, thanks a lot.

Review - Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie

In all, Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie is as hit and miss as the TV show was, once upon a time. Lumley shines, Saunders tries hard, but the thin story is against them from the start, as well as the feeling that we have seen all of this before.

Review: Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie

Joanna Lumley steals the show in the sitcom's fun, not quite fabulous big screen outing.

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie review: Sometimes funny

A must for fans of the TV series, even if the story goes nowhere in particular.

Absolutely Fabulous built the last of its three specials around Eddy and Patsy's wild excitement about the Olympics. It isn't the sport they're interested in, obviously, but the imminent arrival of Michael Douglas, who has rented Eddy's house and who they see as a passport to A-list Olympic parties. "I shall be wearing my buttocks as a head-dress by the time that man arrives," announced Eddy, who plans a major make-over.

Unfortunately, she's not been paying very close attention to the calendar and doesn't realise she's left it too late, a mistake she feels is forgivable: "It's been everywhere for five bloody years! Excuse me if I missed that it's actually bloody started. It's been like tinnitus." Dames Kelly Holmes and Tanni Grey-Thompson and Stella McCartney offered themselves up as straight-women for Patsy and Eddy's faux pas and there was a brief, slightly baffling visit to the Olympic Stadium, during which both women enjoyed an unconvincing reverie of athletic glory. And then, after quite a few raucous laughs, it just stopped, as if nobody had quite worked out where the finish tape was. But I did enjoy Eddy's protest as she was bundled out of the stadium by a security guard: "You're discouraging me from taking up sport!"

Charge your flutes with vodka champagne cocktail, Ab Fab fans! This could be the last-ever episode (although there are rumours of a movie). Certainly, it's the last of three specials, after two at Christmas and New Year, reuniting the bad girls of chichi Holland Park for their 20th anniversary.

Why the long wait? Well, this was always intended as an Olympics-themed edition, with the Games descending abruptly upon Patsy and Eddy's blinkered lives. Eddy could go for gold herself - if there were a category for partying and pratfalls. Sadly, Patsy looks set to be left at the starting line: she's developed, well, let's just say a little issue whenever she sneezes and is in need of a "tightening procedure".

Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley are on top form with the physical comedy and waspish remarks. June Whitfield's Gran is as endearingly batty as ever and tonight gets the final funny line - if not the last laugh. Watch out for cameos by Dames Kelly Holmes and Tanni Grey-Thompson, as well as fashion designer Stella McCartney, for whom Eddy has developed something of a girl crush. It is not reciprocated.