The Last Post Review

The Last Post by Adam Preston

I don’t have a smartphone. I’m 47 in a week. These two things alone don’t bode well for a hot film, how little we know people in society in a media age and what we do when we have to create Memorial from digital media . None of this matters in this kinetic energy of comedy that comes across in The last post as a film about people that will that last breath of laughter from you by its end.

With a pre-title sequence that sets you up and pulls the rug immediately, I could not help but instantly be drawn to Phil. Finding himself in that awkward situation, possibly for the first time meeting the bereaved with no previous connection to himself. The anti-meet-cute situation spirals quickly as he finds he has to deliver a eulogy for the recently deceased, who he only knows through liking her comments on social media a lot. And by comments, probably pics. And by pics. I mean bikinis.

With a tremendous stylistic flair within the scenes, Adam makes no bones about the big ‘spaced’ shape heart in the engine of this film. Sam and Phil could feasibly be the loveable loser lads of that generation just given a polish and still very much the Tim and Mike of the 2020s. With Mark Heap as the Priest, it’s laudable that there’s no avoiding the comparison, so it’s all in with a Hawaiian shirt blazing.

Funerals for younger folk can be surreal to attend. And watching the responses of the mourners as Phil delivers his conclusions keeps the camera and response on him. Ryan manages to lay the sweet spot of being relatable yet totally punchable, allowing the comedy to build. But the attention to the scenery from the ‘dodgy looking flat’ has the classic spaced attribute of being way more significant and more excellent than anything I can afford..I live with my dad…fuck off!

Ahem. But the details like the pink coffin and the range of caricatures keep the humour more in the cartoon field than a stereotype of any group, and I would be up for another visit to the fallible fuckwits soon.

The only reservation would be that the most prominent woman in the film is (a) fancied by both of them and (b) dead. Any expanse in the script should broaden the scope of their world.

As a short of man-child absurdity, it hits the mark and sees it soon as you can.