Breaking the Bank (2014)

Breaking the Bank: Directed by Vadim Jean. With Tamsin Greig, Kelsey Grammer, John Michael Higgins, Doon Mackichan. With ruthless US and Japanese investment banks circling Tuftons, a struggling two-hundred-year-old, family-run British bank, can its bumbling, incompetent chairman, Sir Charles Bunbury, fend off the onslaught and save the bank?

“A glance at the cast list of Breaking the Bank raises expectations. Thereu0026#39;s a huge amount of comic talent here, but good actors need a good script, and they donu0026#39;t have one. Plot and characterisation are hackneyed. Pearce Quigleyu0026#39;s turn as a wise homeless man is a particularly unwelcome cliche, and Mathew Horneu0026#39;s investment banker is as one-note as an electric drill. If Vadim Jean wanted to make a comedy that exposed the absurdity and irresponsibility that led to to financial crisis of 2008, there was merit in the idea and a big target to aim at. Unfortunately he missed it by a mile. Good actors are often reduced to trotting out well-worn one-liners that might have come straight from a Google search for jokes for a best man to make at a wedding. Just as disappointingly, the expositional dialogue designed to show us the workings of the financial world sounds as if it was lifted from Wikipedia. Vadim Jean remains a talented director but on this evidence heu0026#39;s lost his ear for dialogue. Three stars for a cast that work hard and do their best with terrible material.”