Guest House Paradiso
Encyclopedia
Guest House Paradiso is a 1999
British
slapstick
comedy film
written by and starring comic duo Rik Mayall
and Ade Edmondson
, and directed by Edmondson his directorial debut. The film is semi-officially based on their comedy television series Bottom
(in some territories, the DVD cover refers to it as The Bottom Movie). The key difference in the characters is in their names: Mayall's character, known as "Richard Richard" in the TV show, is here referred to as "Richard Twat" (although he regularly and angrily insists on the pronunciation "Thwaite"). Edmondson's character changes from "Edward Elizabeth Hitler" in the TV/live show to "Edward Elizabeth Ndingombaba". The film was made at Ealing studios and on location on the Isle of Wight
.
and Ade Edmondson
) run the worst guest house in the United Kingdom
, neighbouring a poorly maintained nuclear power
station (presumably a reference to Sellafield
). The chef
is an idiotic drunkard (and illegal immigrant) who can't cook and eventually leaves due to not being paid. The guests are totally unsatisfied (one of them played by Bill Nighy
) at the poor service, and all decide to leave, except for one "Mrs Foxfur" (Fenella Fielding
) who lives there. The most famous scene in the film, and the most violent, is Richie and Eddie's fight in the kitchen, from smacking each other's heads in the fridge
door, Richie putting meat hooks up Eddie's nose and crashing him about the place, to Eddie crushing Richie's testicle
s with (appropriately) a nutcracker
.
Life seems bleak for Eddie and Richie, but things seemingly improve with the arrival of the "Nice family", with Simon Pegg
(in his movie debut) playing the father. Furthermore, the famous Italian
actress "Gina Carbonara" (Hélène Mahieu) comes to stay in the grotty house seeking safety from her ill-tempered fiancé Gino Bolognese (Vincent Cassel
). However Gino does eventually find her at the guest house as Eddie and Richard had put her name up in lights outside in order to attract more guests. Later, Richie finds some fish
, which fell off a military lorry heading away from the nuclear power station. Richie and Eddie don't realise that the fish had been contaminated by a radiation leak until they feed them to the guests. Hours later the guests are expelling huge quantities of green vomit
at high velocity — all except for Gina Carbonara, apparently the only guest who did not eat the fish. In the resulting chaos, Gina's violent boyfriend is propelled out of a window into the sea by a tsunami of vomit from the rest of the guests and drowned
. Government agents arrive to hush up the incident and give Eddie and Richie ten million pounds, first class tickets to a Caribbean
island and new identities for both the duo and Gina in exchange for their silence over the leak. The three accept the offer, and head to the Caribbean.
British films of 1999
A list of films produced in the United Kingdom in 1999 :-1999:-External links:* at the Internet Movie Database...
British
Cinema of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...
slapstick
Slapstick film
Slapstick films are a type of comedy film that employ slapstick comedy with five main conventions:#Pain without real consequence.#Editing to turn a situation more unrealistic.#Impossible situations.#Zooms to confuse the audience....
comedy film
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...
written by and starring comic duo Rik Mayall
Rik Mayall
Richard Michael "Rik" Mayall is an English comedian, writer, and actor. He is known for his comedy partnership with Ade Edmondson, his over-the-top, energetic portrayal of characters, and as a pioneer of alternative comedy in the early 1980s...
and Ade Edmondson
Adrian Edmondson
Adrian Charles "Ade" Edmondson is an English comedian. He is probably best known for his comedic roles in the television series The Young Ones and Bottom , for which he also wrote together with his long-time collaboration partner Rik Mayall.-Early life:Edmondson, the second of four children, was...
, and directed by Edmondson his directorial debut. The film is semi-officially based on their comedy television series Bottom
Bottom (TV series)
Bottom was a British sitcom television series that originally aired on BBC2 between 1991 and 1995. It was written by comic duo Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson who star as Richie and Eddie, two flatmates living on the dole in Hammersmith, London...
(in some territories, the DVD cover refers to it as The Bottom Movie). The key difference in the characters is in their names: Mayall's character, known as "Richard Richard" in the TV show, is here referred to as "Richard Twat" (although he regularly and angrily insists on the pronunciation "Thwaite"). Edmondson's character changes from "Edward Elizabeth Hitler" in the TV/live show to "Edward Elizabeth Ndingombaba". The film was made at Ealing studios and on location on the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
.
Plot
Featuring images of Weston Manor in Totland, Isle of Wight in 1999, Richie and Eddie (Rik MayallRik Mayall
Richard Michael "Rik" Mayall is an English comedian, writer, and actor. He is known for his comedy partnership with Ade Edmondson, his over-the-top, energetic portrayal of characters, and as a pioneer of alternative comedy in the early 1980s...
and Ade Edmondson
Adrian Edmondson
Adrian Charles "Ade" Edmondson is an English comedian. He is probably best known for his comedic roles in the television series The Young Ones and Bottom , for which he also wrote together with his long-time collaboration partner Rik Mayall.-Early life:Edmondson, the second of four children, was...
) run the worst guest house in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, neighbouring a poorly maintained nuclear power
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
station (presumably a reference to Sellafield
Sellafield
Sellafield is a nuclear reprocessing site, close to the village of Seascale on the coast of the Irish Sea in Cumbria, England. The site is served by Sellafield railway station. Sellafield is an off-shoot from the original nuclear reactor site at Windscale which is currently undergoing...
). The chef
Chef
A chef is a person who cooks professionally for other people. Although over time the term has come to describe any person who cooks for a living, traditionally it refers to a highly skilled professional who is proficient in all aspects of food preparation.-Etymology:The word "chef" is borrowed ...
is an idiotic drunkard (and illegal immigrant) who can't cook and eventually leaves due to not being paid. The guests are totally unsatisfied (one of them played by Bill Nighy
Bill Nighy
William Francis "Bill" Nighy is an English actor and comedian. He worked in theatre and television before his first cinema role in 1981, and made his name in television with The Men's Room in 1991, in which he played the womanizer Prof...
) at the poor service, and all decide to leave, except for one "Mrs Foxfur" (Fenella Fielding
Fenella Fielding
Fenella Fielding — "England's first lady of the double entendre" — is an English actress, popular in the 1950s and 1960s. She is known for her seductive image and distinctively husky voice.-Family:...
) who lives there. The most famous scene in the film, and the most violent, is Richie and Eddie's fight in the kitchen, from smacking each other's heads in the fridge
Refrigerator
A refrigerator is a common household appliance that consists of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump that transfers heat from the inside of the fridge to its external environment so that the inside of the fridge is cooled to a temperature below the ambient temperature of the room...
door, Richie putting meat hooks up Eddie's nose and crashing him about the place, to Eddie crushing Richie's testicle
Testicle
The testicle is the male gonad in animals. Like the ovaries to which they are homologous, testes are components of both the reproductive system and the endocrine system...
s with (appropriately) a nutcracker
Nutcracker
A nutcracker is a mechanical device for cracking nuts. Usually they work on the principle of moments as described in Archimedes' analysis of the lever...
.
Life seems bleak for Eddie and Richie, but things seemingly improve with the arrival of the "Nice family", with Simon Pegg
Simon Pegg
Simon Pegg is an English actor, comedian, writer, film producer, and director. He is best known for having co-written and stared in various Edgar Wright features, mainly Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and the comedy series Spaced.He also portrayed Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the 2009 Star Trek film...
(in his movie debut) playing the father. Furthermore, the famous Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
actress "Gina Carbonara" (Hélène Mahieu) comes to stay in the grotty house seeking safety from her ill-tempered fiancé Gino Bolognese (Vincent Cassel
Vincent Cassel
Vincent Cassel is a Cesar award winning French actor probably best known to English-speaking audiences through his performances in the Ocean's Trilogy of films and Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan.-Personal life:...
). However Gino does eventually find her at the guest house as Eddie and Richard had put her name up in lights outside in order to attract more guests. Later, Richie finds some fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
, which fell off a military lorry heading away from the nuclear power station. Richie and Eddie don't realise that the fish had been contaminated by a radiation leak until they feed them to the guests. Hours later the guests are expelling huge quantities of green vomit
Vomiting
Vomiting is the forceful expulsion of the contents of one's stomach through the mouth and sometimes the nose...
at high velocity — all except for Gina Carbonara, apparently the only guest who did not eat the fish. In the resulting chaos, Gina's violent boyfriend is propelled out of a window into the sea by a tsunami of vomit from the rest of the guests and drowned
Drowning
Drowning is death from asphyxia due to suffocation caused by water entering the lungs and preventing the absorption of oxygen leading to cerebral hypoxia....
. Government agents arrive to hush up the incident and give Eddie and Richie ten million pounds, first class tickets to a Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
island and new identities for both the duo and Gina in exchange for their silence over the leak. The three accept the offer, and head to the Caribbean.
Cast
- Rik MayallRik MayallRichard Michael "Rik" Mayall is an English comedian, writer, and actor. He is known for his comedy partnership with Ade Edmondson, his over-the-top, energetic portrayal of characters, and as a pioneer of alternative comedy in the early 1980s...
as Richard Twat - Adrian EdmondsonAdrian EdmondsonAdrian Charles "Ade" Edmondson is an English comedian. He is probably best known for his comedic roles in the television series The Young Ones and Bottom , for which he also wrote together with his long-time collaboration partner Rik Mayall.-Early life:Edmondson, the second of four children, was...
as Eddie Elizabeth Ndingombaba - Vincent CasselVincent CasselVincent Cassel is a Cesar award winning French actor probably best known to English-speaking audiences through his performances in the Ocean's Trilogy of films and Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan.-Personal life:...
as Gino Bolognese - Hélène Mahieu as Gina Carbonara
- Bill NighyBill NighyWilliam Francis "Bill" Nighy is an English actor and comedian. He worked in theatre and television before his first cinema role in 1981, and made his name in television with The Men's Room in 1991, in which he played the womanizer Prof...
as Mr Johnson - Simon PeggSimon PeggSimon Pegg is an English actor, comedian, writer, film producer, and director. He is best known for having co-written and stared in various Edgar Wright features, mainly Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and the comedy series Spaced.He also portrayed Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the 2009 Star Trek film...
as Mr Nice - Fenella FieldingFenella FieldingFenella Fielding — "England's first lady of the double entendre" — is an English actress, popular in the 1950s and 1960s. She is known for her seductive image and distinctively husky voice.-Family:...
as Mrs Foxfur - Lisa PalfreyLisa PalfreyLisa Palfrey is a Welsh television actress best known for playing the character of "Rhiannedd Frost" in the Welsh soap Pobol y Cwm. She has also appeared in the British film Maybe Baby alongside Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson and starred in the cult film House of America.She attended Ysgol Gyfun...
as Mrs Nice - Steve O'Donnell as Chef