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Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie | 2016 | R | - 5.4.6
Based on the British TV series: Two well-known but aging fashionistas (Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley) spend large amounts of money shopping, drinking champagne and clubbing across London. The money dries up and further disaster strikes when one of them is blamed for a famous model's plunge from a balcony into the Thames River. Also with Jane Horrocks, Julia Sawalha and June Whitfield. Directed by Mandie Fletcher. A few lines of dialogue are in French and Japanese and are not translated. [1:31]
SEX/NUDITY 5 - A man says that he misses pubic hair and hates Brazilian wax jobs that leave the pubis bald; he says, "I had a mustache; you are what you eat!" and adds, "The Jacuzzi is a smoothie of old sperm." A woman says, "1969, you know what I mean?" to another woman, suggesting a sex act. A man reads Twitter gossip to himself and reacts audibly as if having an orgasm. A woman who might be transgender says a man is transgender and will have surgery; a woman asks, "When does it come off?" and the first woman says they do not discuss it, but tells the man, "Show me your breasts" and he refuses. A woman says that she knows that her "husband" is a woman and really likes women, putting a hand on one knee of two other women. Two women take a 13-year-old girl to an adult party and she asks, "I'm not going to be man bait, right?" A teen girl says that a man makes pornographic films. A woman says that her mother used to bring her to a drag club when she was a young child.
► A woman wearing a floor length dress turns her back and we see a nude back, waist and full buttocks through a large cutout. A woman wears a deeply cut neckline that shows most of her breasts (no nipples). Cell phone images show a man shirtless with a bare chest and a back view shows his buttocks barely covered by a tight Speedo. A woman wears a high-necked dress with cleavage printed onto the upper part of the bodice. A woman wears deep V-necks that reveal cleavage. Two men wear only Speedos, lying on their backs on a yacht in a long shot. A woman wears tight tights, short-shorts and a leotard and her buttocks are shown with a smiley face on one side; her chest is covered with inflated rectangles with words like SEO on them. A man wears a vest with no shirt underneath. A woman wears a tight-fitting wet suit. A gay bar scene features over 50 men wearing curly wigs, dresses and padding to create large bosoms. At a party we see two nude mannequins from the waist down; the female has no details and the male has a three-dimensional rectangle at the groin. A woman riding in a boat at night puts a flashing police light between her legs to hold the light.
► A man and a woman kiss briefly and then kiss for several seconds.
► A woman dresses in a man's suit and wears a false mustache to persuade another woman to marry her; they marry in a church, air kiss, have dinner at a hotel, and one woman leaves to go to bed and the woman in the suit and mustache says that she really likes the other woman. A woman imagines another woman rubbing her shoulders and flirting with her. A woman tries to hug a man in an office and he runs away. A woman asks a man if he remembers having sex with her long ago; he winces and says he was only 15 and she took his virginity and she asks to have sex with him (he refuses).
► A woman on a yacht asks to have sex with a male friend; he refuses and introduces her to his girlfriend, as women wearing skimpy bikinis and short skirts revealing most of their thighs dance nearby.
VIOLENCE/GORE 4 - A woman falls or is pushed off a roof and falls into the Thames River. A woman sets off an alarm by smoking in an airplane bathroom and she is zapped in the chest by a taser (she shudders and sparks). A man strikes a 13-year-old girl in the forehead with a makeup brush, but we see no injury.
► A brick crashes through a shattering window and we see a little broken glass on the floor.
► A woman runs into a pylon at the end of a street and is unhurt. A drunken woman falls out of a car onto a driveway (please see the Substance Use category for more details), then falls again on her front steps. A woman stumbles into a door jamb.
► Two women avoid police capture by hiding under water in a pool and running through streets; they steal a small truck and race away from police officers in a squad car and on foot, the truck goes up a hill and stalls and then rolls back down and falls off a short bridge into a bay where one of the women says that she does not want to be old and fat and will have a watery grave as the truck sinks (the women are OK). Police search a river for a body and find none. Three women search a river at night, one of them with a flashing police light on her head in the water.
► An angry woman knocks books and magazines off two tables in an office. A man pounds once on a wall and shouts at his assistant, "Coffee!" Two women argue mildly a few times and one of the women habitually shouts at other people. A woman is accused of pushing another woman to her death and a police officer tells the accused that there is an eyewitness who saw the murder and that a lynch mob is waiting for her. A woman picks up a Buddha statue and yells at it. News reports talk about a woman killing another woman and we see fans scream and cry. A woman asks another woman, "Fat woman kill thin woman?" and says the house is even fat. A woman brings an armload of mail into a house and says to a woman, "Your death threats, m'lady."
► A woman inserts a long tube into the front of her trousers for urination, which we do not see or hear. Two women make rude "raspberry" noises with their tongues toward other people. A woman wipes her cell phone screen on her clothed buttock and smells the phone, and then makes a face. A woman tells an air hostess on a plane, "I've started" (implying menstruation) so that she can get to the bathroom.
LANGUAGE 6 - About 15 F-words and its derivatives, 3 sexual references, 7 scatological terms, 6 anatomical terms, 11 mild obscenities, name-calling (old pop stars, midget, crazy, stupid, dumb, pariah, tiny, ridiculous, disgusting, fat, old lady, drunk), exclamations (oh my goodness, shut-up), 9 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, Oh God, My God, Christ, Thank God).
SUBSTANCE USE - A woman in an office snorts something that we cannot see from a shelf, two women say they should take pills and we see a series of short scenes where they giggle while drinking champagne and put lampshades on their head then writhe on the floor, two women hold a bong filled with smoke and laugh (we do not see them smoke it), and two women smoke a marijuana cigarette and sniff popper drug bottles. A woman injects both her cheeks and her lips with a syringe of Botox after drinking a double shot of unnamed alcohol, a woman licks a champagne bottle's opening when she finds she is out of champagne, glasses of champagne are seen on tables and in the hands of men and women drinking from them at a fashion show and other men and women drink cocktails, two women drink several glasses of champagne and become drunk (they stumble and giggle), a woman's lipstick smears all over her lower face when she is drunk, a server walks around a room with a large champagne bottle in an ice bucket, two women pour vodka into glasses of champagne and drink them, two women drink from a whiskey bottle, several scenes feature either two or three women drinking champagne in an apartment as well as in a limo and a hotel room and beside a pool, a woman drinks champagne and rubs white powder (drugs of some sort) on her gums as well, and a woman in a car drinks perfume. A woman smokes an e-Cigarette in three indoor scenes and creates a lot of vapor or smoke and another woman shouts at her to go outside in one of the scenes, two women smoke cigarettes in a dozen scenes (in a home, a hotel room, a club, a bar, near a pool, in a car, and in an office), a woman smokes a cigarette on a rooftop and a man dressed as a woman smokes a cigarette in a club, and a woman smokes a cigarette in an airplane restroom and sets off an alarm.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Personal appearance, aging, the fashion industry, money and spending problems, divorce, rumors, paparazzi, murder, people wrongly accused of a capital crime, relationships, friendships, family, love, respect, forgiveness, starting over.
MESSAGE - Fashion is a hard industry in which to keep a career, but aging need not interfere.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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We are a totally independent website with no connections to political, religious or other groups & we neither solicit nor choose advertisers. You can help us keep our independence with a donation.
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Become a member of our premium site for just $2/month & access advance reviews, without any ads, not a single one, ever. And you will be helping support our website & our efforts.
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We welcome suggestions & criticisms -- and we will accept compliments too. While we read all emails & try to reply we do not always manage to do so; be assured that we will not share your e-mail address.