Having failed to successfully instigate a revolution, Ondi Timoner’s Russell Brand retrospective aims to peer behind the faux Victorian veneer. It’s timely, because Brand has just abandoned his social media accounts and skipped away from YouTube show “The Trews”, seemingly having taken the predictable backlash quite personally. Who is it for, you might ask, and more pertinently, does anybody care?
To anyone familiar with Brand’s back-story, the first half of the documentary is something of a “Bookywook” (the comedian’s fantastic 2007 autobiography) retread; growing up in Grays, Essex, his ill-fated acting school stint, and his fractured family life, all facilitating his much publicised heroin addiction.
Timoner has unearthed some great archive footage, from a narcissistic Edinburgh Festival performance that ends in a hospital visit, to excerpts of shows that were never meant to make it to air. They were simply a way for Brand’s manager, John Noel, to give him £600 to make something, just so it would keep the hyperactive comic away from the production offices.
Noel is one of a number of talking head contributors who help to establish a tone of deprecation throughout. Another Noel, this time former Oasis man Noel Gallagher, offers up hilarious insights that will resonate with anyone who has never been able to look beyond the façade of the comedian, or scoffed at his involvement in the general election debates. He does the same with an anecdote about Brand’s marriage to Katy Perry.
