Pasty Faces review

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A fish-out-of-water caper comedy capped off with a bungled heist, anyone? Game as it is, David Baker's feature debut doesn't exactly dazzle with blinding originality.

It all rests on two Scottish scallywags, Mickey (Baker) and Joe (Cross), who are fooled by a friend into ditching their glum Glasgow lives for fame and riches in the Hollywood hills. It's all lies, of course - - once there, no-one understands a word they're saying and they can't get a gig on Braveheart 2 because their hair isn't orange enough. But they are pasty-faced, which gets them mistaken for Italians who might be handy in a casino heist scenario...

What follows is a string of largely lame knockabout larks, handled without any of the spark or imagination that might have pulled this kind of pallid farce off. The cast give it plenty of pleasing goofiness, but you're left feeling that it must've been more fun to make than it is to watch.

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