Special People Justin Edgar UK 2007
British comedy is famously sadistic to its characters by contrast to US comedy where the characters are more lovable. Compare Basil Faulty (UK – Faulty Towers) to Ron Burgundy (US - Anchorman) for example. Both men are inept yet Faulty is a bastard; Burgundy’s heart is in the right place. A better example might be the lead character in - the self-declared successor to the best British sitcom ever - The Office. A complete arse through and through Ricky Gervais’ signature character David Brent is given the chance to redeem himself. A sympathetic touch that belies Gervais’ mostly disastrous attempts to cross the Atlantic in comedy terms.
It’s instructive then that the lead figure of derision in Special People, a British comedy film, is ultimately a sympathetic character. Especially when the entire film heaps a succession of humiliations upon him. An extension of a short film of the same name made a few years previously, from the title down the crux of Special People lies in the interplay between a patronising teacher and the disabled teenagers who react to him with sarcasm.
Those who can’t traditionally teach and filmmaker Jasper (played by Dominic Coleman) is no exception. He’s the director of Koncrete Dreamz, an obscenely bad attempt at social realism, and winner of the Walsall Film Festival in 1988. Yet by some inexplicable twist of fate (to Jasper that would be) he now leads a filmmaking course at a school for the disabled. His estimation of his own talent is matched only by his condescension and the teens instantly react to this.
Crucially the film brooks no shortcuts. The film the group make is funny but total crap. The romance in the group of teens doesn’t necessarily work out and Jasper certainly doesn’t get back together with his old girlfriend. But for all its humour Special People doesn’t toy enough with the disabled teens. They are all shown to be typically disaffected examples but only flawed when they take the piss out of some mentally handicapped teens. Apart from this lapse they are basically paragons reacting to Jasper condescension.
But no matter. An extremely funny film, Special People succeeds mainly because Jasper is such a great creation. An easy target to ridicule, he’s incredibly hard to dislike despite this. Despite being self obsessed he does genuinely care about the teens he’s looking after even as he hideously patronises them again and again. Proving that in terms of UK comedy this is a ‘Special Film’.
