We absolutely love Keith Lemon but there’s an elephant in the room that needs addressing.
Down the years, Keith and his alter ego Leigh Francis, from Beeston in Leeds, have been involved in so many great things like Celebrity Juice, Bo’ Selecta! and Through The Keyhole to name just a few but there’s no getting away from the fact Keith Lemon: The Film was a real stinker.
The 2012 box office bomb, which was brimming with celebrity cameos, sees Keith invent a phone with a light-up lemon on it and he becomes rich. He then moves to Hollywood and lives a celebrity lifestyle while dating Kelly Brook - who plays an exaggerated version of herself.
We’ll delve into what critics made of it soon enough but just to set the scene Keith Lemon: The Film currently holds an undesirable, if in some regards rather impressive, zero per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 2.6 out of 10 rating on IMDb.
It went on to win three British Academy of Rubbish Films and Terrible Acting (BARFTAs) accolades for Worst Film, Worst Dialogue and Worst Female Acting Performance. The film is considered one of the most infamous failures of British cinema over the last decade.
You can watch the trailer for the film below
Guest cameos
Joining Leigh Francis in the main cast were Kelly Brook, Verne Troyer, Kevin Bishop, Paddy McGuinness and Nina Wadia.
While, there was a bloated guestlist of famous faces cropping up for shoehorned cameos. Three cheers to the big names who got involved but we imagine many wish they hadn’t. You can see the pretty impressive, and somewhat random, list below:
- Peter Andre
- Gary Barlow
- Fearne Cotton
- Emma Bunton
- Melanie Chisholm
- Gino D'Acampo
- Jason Donovan
- David Hasselhoff
- Jedward
- Vernon Kay
- Ronan Keating
- Chris Moyles
- Billy Ocean
- Rizzle Kicks
- Phillip Schofield
- Tinchy Stryder
- Holly Willoughby
- Denise van Outen
The response
The movie debuted at number five at the UK Box Office earning £1,196,310 in revenue. During its second weekend, the movie dropped to number nine and after a short stint in the charts, it made a total of £4,017,234 against a budget of £5,400,000.
In a one-star review in The Daily Telegraph, Robbie Collin said: “it may be the most staggeringly perfunctory piece of filmmaking I have ever seen."
For Total Film, George Bass described the funniest moment in the film as ‘a bus sign (T’LEEDS). Six letters and an apostrophe. Save yourself the ticket.’
King of the rant, Mark Kermode, for BBC’s Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review Show, really let rip describing Keith Lemon: The Film as ‘shockingly terrible’.
We thought we’d treat you to a few extracts from his review below:
- “I was feeling my lifeforce eeking away.”
- “If you found any of the unbelievably puerile gags funny then you’d be 13, tops.”
- “I thought it was the least fun I’ve had in a cinema and I actually came out feeling like I wanted to bathe in Clorox.”
- “Phillip Schofield, Phillip Schofield when he turned up I did feel that parental thing of ‘I’m not angry I am just really disappointed’.”
- “Is there anyone out there who went to see it and genuinely found it funny? Because, so far, out of the hundreds of people messaging me about it on Twitter I don’t have one that has a good word to say about it.”
- “This is not a film.”
Kermode placed Keith Lemon: The Film at number one on his worst films of 2012 list and, in 2018, at number five of his worst movies of the past ten years.
You can listen to Mark Kermode’s full review below
It is fair to say we’ll be waiting a very long time for a sequel to Keith Lemon: The Film but, at the same time, surely we’ve all forgiven Leigh Francis now and instead we savour all the hilarious TV programmes he’s produced.
Plus, in a few more years, Keith Lemon: The Film might obtain the ‘so bad, it's good’ status...we’ll stress...there’s still a few more years before it achieves that.
For now, we’ll leave the final word to Total Film’s Cath Clarke who summed it up best for all involved when she asked: “Career lows all round, then?”
