Edina (Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy (Joanna Lumley) are back and on the big screen! Yes, Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie reunites the best friends for more madcap adventures. In the film, which opens July 22, Edina is looking to goose her PR clientele after her book deal with Random Penguin fizzles. She targets a party Patsy’s magazine is hosting for famed fashion designer Huki Miki (Janette Tough).
But as Edina zeros in on a famous celebrity model, an incident occurs that gets her (and Patsy) in trouble with the law and their faces splashed across the tabloids. Broke as well as despised, the pair hatch a scheme to find a wealthy man Patsy once knew—intimately, like so many other men—to maintain their lavish lifestyle. Because, well, the ladies believe living well is the best revenge.
Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie features terrific comic performances from Saunders and Lumley, who wear outrageous outfits, and often have amusing expressions. Lumley’s sneer and Saunders’ wide-eyed looks are priceless. As expected, the pair smoke and drink throughout.
“A chaos of drink, and cigarettes and champagne,” Lumley said, drolly, in a recent conference call.
“And a few illegal substances … and generally, in very bad shoes,” Saunders added, brightly.
In various comedic moments, Patsy can be seen licking the outside of a champagne bottle or, in a particularly desperate attempt for alcohol consumption, downing some Chanel No. 5. In another amusing sequence, Edina “exercises” by using a razor scooter to travel from her front door to her car door.
“Yes, I’ve never been on a scooter before, and they won’t let me wear a helmet,” Saunders confessed. “I was very, very brave. It’s almost the most exercise I’ve ever done.”
Another “action” scene in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie involves a low-speed chase during which Patsy grabs a cigarette out of the mouth of a man in a café as her vehicle passes by him.
“We insisted on doing our own stunts,” Lumley enthuses. “Obviously, it’s a reach from a car traveling at almost three miles an hour to take a cigarette off a completely supine man. It was a bit challenging, but I managed it.”
Given that the film is set in the fashion world, the Ab Fab ladies discussed Patsy and Edina’s fabulous frocks.
Saunders demurred, indicating that Edina “is always over-ambitious, should we say, with her costume. She’s always thinking she’s going to be really thin by tomorrow and never is, so she is squeezed into some appalling outfits.” She added, “Edina gets older and fatter, and actually, Patsy doesn’t change at all. She’s just sort of embalmed and remains exactly the same.”
Lumley describes Patsy as “cool as ever.” However, a subplot transpires that involves Patsy gluing on a mustache and pulling back her hair to assume a masculine identity as part of a crazy scheme.
Fans of the series, will likely recall this is not Patsy’s first time as a man.
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