Shawn Watson If you recognise my review title you will remember the good Alan Partridge from way back. That Alan is gone.The time to make an Alan Partridge movie came and went with Y2K (remember when that was a big thing?). When the 90s ended Coogan changed the character and took him far away from the bumbling sports broadcaster struggling for metaphors and re-molded him into a depressed, self-alienating, and rather hateful figure. Where there was once a naive, inexperienced innocence there is now a bitter, self- aggrandising bully. It's never sat well with me and I like to disregard anything after I'm Alan Partridge Series.In fact it seems that Coogan himself has lost track of the character's history as much of this film is completely out of whack with previously established AP. In 1997 he was 43. In 2013 he should have been 59. Instead he's 55. Lynn should be 66! Alan is asked if he has any experience with firearms and fails to remember that he shot dead odious restaurant critic Michael Winner...I mean Forbes McAllister. He's portrayed here as a coward when he's previously been quick to needless aggression and violence.Now working as a low-brow DJ at North Norfolk Radio, Alan fears that he might be about to lose his job in the recent takeover by non- creative money-men who want to re-brand everything to something soulless and bland. In a panic he sells-out his 'friend' and fellow DJ Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney, the only good thing about this film) who then lays siege to the station after a quick mental breakdown. It's up to Alan to save the day and act as a buffer between Pat and the police.It would be a decent set-up if ANYTHING remotely exciting or funny happened. Instead we get a series of frustrating scenes that go nowhere, forced humor with mostly bad timing (the excuse for Alan ending up half-naked is so weak I am amazed Coogan put his name to it), and some of the ugliest digital photography ever shown in cinemas. Alan is a monstrously unlikable character at this point and he's completely without an arc. Why should we care what happens to him? He doesn't deserve a happy ending. He's loyal to no one apart from his own self-interests. Pat is the only sympathetic or identifiable character in the film and he doesn't get the pay-off he, or the audience, deserves. Why is Michael the Geordie even in this? He has about 2 minutes of screen time and does NOTHING. Alpha Papa is TV movie quality. It should never have been released in cinemas and is so far removed from the original character concept it is an insult to his earliest fans.

nicholls_les Sorry but I didn't laugh once.I like Alan Partridge the TV series but I cannot see why so many seem to find this film funny. Someone said laugh a minute, well I didn't. It was puerile and silly with a storyline that could have been funny but wasn't. There were opportunities to make this funny but these were missed big time. I couldn't help thinking that it was a short sketch stretched out to fill the time needed to make it into a movie. I fortunately watched this on DVD and towards the end fast forwarded some as I was losing the will to live. Sadly I have to use more lines (imdb stop this silly restriction) and I cannot think of anything else to say about this tripe.

annuskavdpol Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa was a movie whereby two dream-states were interesting. The first dream state was when the main character had access to a weapon and in his waking dream state he saved the hostages but this was an allusion as in actual fact he did nothing. Secondly, when he was on the pier on his back he was watching a seagull transcend high up into the skies. This dream sequence did seem to be a near death experience - but in actual fact it was the viewer watching the seagull versus having an out-of-body experience or was it both at the same time or all three perspectives. I guess that is what makes film so fascinating - is the ability to see all visual angles at the same time, getting different cinematic camera vantage points. In actual fact the human being is more complicated than that. A human being can see perspective from all angles - similar to the view points of multiple camera angles in edited together in a sequence covering the same topic, however the human being also has feeling internally and this component is very hard to convey on film. It is often conveyed through means of intonation or facial expressions - but that is staged emotion. The real emotions inside an individual are often so private and confidential that they very rarely come to light. Especially the most complex of human beings. Their perspectives and narratives, the ones with the most profound inner feelings, can often not be conveyed through the visualization of camera work and dialogue however bringing in a good dialogue combined with a good visual story-telling featured in a movie is an attempt at a language conveying humanity in a pictorial and narrative sequencing. I believe in the power of humor to make a heavy situation light, like Charlie Chaplin and his sequencing on Adolf Hitler. Charlie Chaplin makes a good attempt to bring humor into one of the darkest historical situation of our time. Salvation is in humor.

hamilton-54-580314 Massive fan of Alan Partridge down the years. I realize that the lengthened format almost universally fails to live up to the shortened one but this offering fell far below what I had expected from one of my all- time favorite British comedic brands. This was very surprising as Steve Coogan/Alan Partridge has done such a fantastic job down the years of limiting his output & thus placing any new stuff at a huge premium for avid fans like myself. I enjoyed Coogan's similarly formulaic The Parole Officer from 2001 far more than this lazy, tired, insult to one of the top British comedy brands of the last 30 years. The reasons for the failure of this effort in my eyes are a combination of weakened casting (widened) & the inability to use Partridge as the singular focus under the limitations of the format.