Having been introduced to Richard Ayoade as
the character Moss on the IT Crowd, I would always associate his brand of humour
with the dry and caustically funny one of his character. I was surprised to find
later on, when on The Graham Norton Show, he seemed to be pretty much the same
in real life. During the interview he spoke of this book and I was intrigued
enough to grab a copy.
Ayoade on Top is literally his take on the
movie View from the Top starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Christina Applegate and
their dreams of working on an airline. He takes you through the movie step by
step and interrupts the scenes with his ideas about the situations and
basically tears each section apart.
I felt rather ambivalent when reading this,
as some of the criticism was spot on while some of it just felt as thought it
was there because something had to be said. It was almost as though he was
trying to find something to critique in every scene but landed up throwing
things in. Some of the critique was just genius, though, and absolutely had me
in stitches.
The movie is absurdly cheesy and deserved Ayoade’s
brand of humour, but his style of writing might not appeal to everyone. I also
found the copious number of footnotes and having to go back and forth on an eReader
between them rather tedious. The index also took up a large portion of the end
of the book.
Overall an average book, but since it was
based on an average movie, I guess that’s about right . . .
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