Fat Slags
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 "Their clothes may be tight but their morals are loose" Yeah, this movie has loose morals alright...
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Fat Slags (also known as Fat Sl*gs) is a 2004 British comedy produced by Artists Independent Pictures and Funny Films and is based-off The Fat Slags comic strip by Viz. The film stars Fiona Allen, Sophie Thompson, Jerry O'Connell, Anthony Head, Geri Halliwell, and Naomi Campbell, written by William Osborne, and directed by Ed Bye. The creators had no editorial control over the film. Despite the relative popularity of the comic strip and its celebrity cameos, the film was widely panned.
Plot
The film chronicles the (mis)adventures of Sandra (Fiona Allen) and Tracey (Sophie Thompson), the famously vulgar and crass titular Fat Slags. The pair leave their hometown of Fulchester for London, shagging and boozing their way to fame and fortune. On the day the Fat Slags arrive in London, internationally-renowned billionaire Sean Cooley (Jerry O'Connell) suffers a blow to the head that him temporarily insane. When he spots Sandra and Tracey on a daytime chat show he falls for their larger-than-life outlook. A media sensation is brought about when Cooley forces fashion designer Fidor Konstantin (James Dreyfus) to base his upcoming collection on the Fat Slags. In a whirlwind turn of events, Sandra and Tracey take the United Kingdom by storm, hitting #1 in the record charts and inadvertently winning the Turner Prize. As far as the press is concerned, fat is the new black. This new trend leads to Cooley's assistant Paige gaining weight and getting a big belly. Throughout their journey into the world of fame, the Slags maintain their unique, endearing vulgarity, coupled with an innocence that draws the British public to their cause. But in private, jealousy is driving a wedge between Sandra and Tracey as they vie for Cooley's attentions. Only when he regains his mental faculties and turns on the girls do they realize that their friendship is the only real thing they have in the mad world they have entered.
Why It Makes Us Say "Oh Lordy", In A Bad Way
- Barely resembles the original comic. For one thing, Fulchester is shown as a small industrial town, when it's actually meant to be modelled after the northern English city of Newcastle (Viz's base). For another, the Slags have always been shown as jobless losers; they've certainly never been welders, as they are in the film endowed as.
- Terrible plot.
- Utterly disgusting jokes that rely too heavily on toilet and grotesque humor (The magazine the characters were based on had strong amounts, but not like this).
- Pointless cameos from Dolph Lundgren, Ralf Little, Naomi Campbell, and Les Dennis.
- Hideous fake female fat suits which we see naked.
- Too many pop-culture references that make the film feel extremely dated. In particular, the film's climax spoofs the first Mission Impossible film, which came out eight years before this.
- Pointless subplot with Paige (Geri Halliwell) gaining weight to impress Sean (Jerry O'Connell), and one with the slags' boyfriends getting arrested by immigration.
- Annoying music score that actively seems to be trying to sound like flatulence.
- Some jokes make no sense.
Redeeming Qualities
- The factory explosion actually looks pretty good considering the film's low budget.
- Some good songs on the soundtrack.
- They at least got the personalities of the two Slags broadly correct, and Fiona Allen and Sophie Thompson give decent enough performances.
- The scene where Tracey threw a flat dog like a Frisbee which hit a gardener that farted then fell in a wheelbarrow and exploded was kind of funny.
Reception
Fat Slags received near unanimously negative reviews and was widely panned by critics. The Sun said "There may still be some diehard Viz aficionados who'll love every second of this film - but I'm one and I didn't," while The Guardian stated "It has plenty of gross-out stuff, but chucked in with an eerie lack of enjoyment or conviction. Depression seeps out of the screen like carbon monoxide." Graham Dury stated that Rita, Sue and Bob Too was a more accurate live action depiction of the comic book characters. It was also claimed he was so appalled by the film, that he stopped drawing the strips and it was dropped from Viz, though that proved unfounded as the strip was never dropped (though another artist drew the strip for a few months after the film's release). British film historian I.Q. Hunter, discussing the question "What is the worst British film ever made?", listed Fat Slags as one of the contenders for that title, while former Channel Awesome reviewer Film Brain named it as the single worst film he had ever reviewed on his web series.
Trivia
- Viz, who publish the original Fat Slags comic strip, has disowned the film due to how bad it was and had no control over its production.
- It was reported that the strip's artist, Graham Dury, was so demoralised by the treatment of his creations that he announced that he was dropping them from the comic altogether. This was actually a misquote by an over-enthusiastic press officer and there was no intention of dropping the characters. Dury did not watch the film.