The Leisure Class

The characters are barely sketched in at all, the pacing is wildly off--it's an 85-minute movie that feels like it lasts forever, even as it doesn't have enough time to properly service any important parts of the story--and the only sparks of life come whenever Weeks and Tom Bell (star and co-writer of the original "Leisure Class" short, and a former co-star of Weeks' on British television), as Weeks' less polished criminal brother, are simply bantering, and we know from the show that almost all of that was improvised.

It is difficult to separate The Leisure Class from "Project Greenlight," and that’s probably to the film’s benefit, since it can’t stand up on its own. It’s a farce that’s not particularly farcical, a dark comedy with little humor, a screwball caper that wants to suggest great films of yesteryear without giving its own plotting and details the attention they need to work in that style. Everything feels undercooked.

Having initially set out to make a comedy, the producers bowed to Mann’s darker vision, yielding something closer to a satire. But the targets aren’t particularly distinctive, and the notion of the entire narrative unfolding over a 24-hour period, as executed, makes for a rather blunt, heavy-handed approach.

The Leisure Class is every bit as pinched and humorless its director.... It’s a piece of predictable hackwork.

There’s little reason to waste 85 minutes watching Jason Mann’s The Leisure Class, a tonally troubled and reprehensibly dull movie.