Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

For all its arthouse pretensions and action spectacle, cinema is essentially about pick 'n' mix, asserts former usher and perennial film student Chris Thorburn. And it's that varied, unpredictable quality that he extends to Cineman, his irreverent love letter to celluloid.

Although the diffident, apologetic Glaswegian establishes his nerdy, beta-male credentials from the start, with a lovely throwaway line about his choice of outfit and the consequences of his popcorn-filled poster image, he's no awkward wallflower content to remain lurking in the shadows, rattling off an early volley of quickfire gags with an extended, animated headbang to Asteroid, the Pearl & Dean theme.

Cynically suggesting reasons for Scotland's current importance as a filming hub for Hollywood, with a playfully witty quip about the independence referendum, Thorburn acknowledges his nitpicker tendencies with his observations on the shooting of Avengers: Infinity War in Edinburgh on nearby Cockburn Street.

More cognisant of Dave Chappelle's romcom roles than his stand-up output, Thorburn establishes a hierarchy of artforms with his placing of films above television and books, some of his arguments wilfully partisan, some genuinely persuasive.

Similarly, he makes an inventive suggestion for a new direction for the Home Alone franchise that has you slapping your head with its brilliance, even if you know the studios would never touch it. Likewise, the tired, cross-dressing shit of Martin Lawrence's Big Momma's House movies might be revelatory if they followed Thorburn’s script for addressing modern shifts in attitudes about the mutability of gender and some deep emotional soul searching.

Furthermore, who wouldn't want a Pixar film voiced by Larry David that truly showcases his prickly personality?

Enthused by the movie industry’s Barbieheimer shot in the arm after those dark days of the pandemic, Thorburn appreciates that he has more than a century of collective cultural references to draw from. That’s a vanishingly rare set of touchstones to unite his audience or test their knowledge when entertainment options are becoming so many and fragmented.

Yes, he's shooting fish in a barrel with his mockery of The Fast And The Furious franchise, while the insane logical inconsistencies of the Cars animations are an absolute gift to his irritable, hungover eye.

But rather than simply dismiss the now outrageous misogyny, homophobia and general rampant bigotry of the early noughties college movie, he pithily captures it as a minute-long blast of awfulness and digs right into the collective cultural brainwashing that permitted the genre. At the same time, he capably conveys the creeping horror of sharing a film that is a treasured, formative cornerstone of your personality and realising it's bad in any number of ways through the confused eyes of a loved one.

There are some barbed moments in what's otherwise a pretty light, gently silly hour, as Thorburn suggests a fresh angle on the art vs artist debate that allows him to acknowledge his love of Woody Allen films. And he delivers a careful, satisfyingly precise jab at mealy-mouthed stars justifying huge pay cheques to ignore political situations, even as their former co-stars take a principled stance.

Mostly, though, Thorburn keeps things daft, with the highlights the routines that showcase his own creativity, his more abstract mash-ups of movies with other cultural phenomenon. He closes with a crooned retooling of pop songs as themes for specific classic flicks, the Daniel Day-Lewis belter with which he finishes something you'll be internally humming for days afterwards.

Although it's an unfortunate comparison to make, the closest celebrated routine I can compare it to is Tom Binns' conceit as hospital DJ Ivan Brackenbury, whereby there's pleasure in trying to figure out the joke justifying the song as it plays, then secondary delight in hearing it confirmed in the chorus.

Ignoring any such negative note, Thorburn has affectionately crafted a multimedia hour with enough enjoyable format points and set pieces to be tweaked and returned to every couple of years, so it could theoretically run and run.

The slightly cramped confines of Stand Four, with its standard size television screen and slightly tricky sightlines at the back of the room don't fully do it justice and it's to be hoped that he can bring it back to bigger screens in future.

Review date: 8 Aug 2024
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Stand 3 and 4