Review by Steve Bennett

Despite what you may think, this is not so much a pedantic analysis of poor writing, but a wider moan about the daily bombardment of useless information. Spam and advertising blurbs vex them most, especially when vast multinational businesses feign an unnatural chumminess to try to shift more products.

Our hosts inspect these promotional blurbs and have a go at rewriting them to be more honest – in prose, not verse - which is interspersed with some unnaturally over-rehearsed banter and monologues. But it’s easy to mock things like rip-off loan ads and corporate evil, and already there are plenty of stand-ups who do it better and more eloquently than this pair. The rewriting premise also stifles them, reducing all ideas to weak parody.

There is some style to the presentation, though, especially the delightful animations by Jon Dunleavy that demarcate the sketches and the rabid passion with which Wright rails against commercialism. Their creation of modernist poetry from spam emails is a nice touch, and they offer some marginally amusing examples of their own poor writing, mainly in the form of Wright’s embarrassing teenage diaries.

But although they are decent company, they’ve not got beyond superficial mocking of ubiquitous subjects – and even the slick structure is let down by an unbelievably trite epilogue about how all communication is important, that’s more cheesy than any marketing bumf.

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett

Review date: 1 Jan 2008
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett