ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING (Terry Jones). 85 minutes. Opens Friday (April 1). See Listing. Rating: N
For a movie about limitless potential, Absolutely Anything carries no creative spark of its own.
Simon Pegg plays a London schoolteacher endowed by aliens with the power to make his wishes reality, but this fantasy comedy feels like a feeble retread of Bruce Almighty.
Director/co-writer Terry Jones supposedly wrote this a while before Jim Carrey and Tom Shadyac’s 2003 blockbuster but never got around to making it he would have been better off letting it lie. Jones’s conceit restricts the action to a few apartments and classrooms, focusing on Pegg’s attempts to woo his downstairs neighbour (Kate Beckinsale), who’s trying to avoid her crazy American ex (Rob Riggle).
Jones casts himself and surviving Pythons John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle and Michael Palin as the voices of Pegg’s extraterrestrial benefactors, and the late Robin Williams is the voice of Pegg’s dog, but no one says anything funny.
