Have the Boosh managed to top last year's surrealist hit, Arctic Boosh? Sadly not. But that won't stop Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding packing them in with AutoBoosh, their third comedy vehicle.
This year's story is loosely based around two intrepid but hapless outward-bound explorers and the various characters (notably a fabulously ghoulish hitch-hiker) they encounter on their journeys through darkest woodland. Thus, AutoBoosh retains the theatrical elements of past years but with a more macabre edge. However, this (and the occasionally stilted construction) makes me wonder whether AutoBoosh resulted from one or two creative dark nights of the soul.
Where the humour used to at least appear to fly out naturally and spontaneously, now it feels like Bar ratt and Fielding have been actively pondering what they are doing.
The Boosh are hardly at crisis point yet - far from it - but there is a tangible loss of that mesmeric edge. It seems like a conscious decision to tone down the surrealism in favour of their strengths as a double act, which is all well and good, but the interplay works best in a surreal environment, as underlined by the fabulous closing 15 minutes. Following too much hit-and-miss banter and some promising plots that are never quite fully explored (the horror butler who keeps his voice in a jar), a glorious duelling sequence and eight foot-high parka monster just about scale their usual peaks.
But there's something less than wholehearted about the duo's performance. After two masterpieces, beginning with 1998's Mighty Boosh, Barratt and Fielding have delivered the comedic equivalent of pop's "difficult third album".
