Seize Them! (15)

Humble Joan leads the peasant revolt against unpopular Dark Ages tyrant Queen Dagan. The toppled monarch goes on the run with her trusted servant Shulmay in search of a new army to restore her rightful place on the throne. Lowly dung shoveller Bobik agrees to accompany Dagan and Shulmay on their odyssey to the coast with treacherous royal adviser Leofwine and two guards on their trail.

LondonNet Film Review

Seize Them! (15) Film Review from LondonNet

The lights go out completely in director Curtis Vowell’s Dark Ages comedy, which instigates a peasant uprising in an olde worlde England where impromptu banquets steady royal nerves and dissent is met with merry dismemberment. Visually and tonally, Seize Them! trudges through similar terrain to Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans, albeit with a distinctly adult sense of humour, on-screen bloodletting and a cartload of expletives. Emmy Award-winning Veep screenwriter Andy Riley’s script urgently requires a grindstone to sharpen the blunt edges of its rapier wit so the film can at least cut the dead air…

For prolonged periods, jokes face-plant into the mud, and when a punchline does land on its feet, the relief is short lived and invariably followed by another uncomfortable silence. Thankfully, the film stops short of unleashing a punning caterwaul of “the peasants are revolting!”. A dizzying array of British and Irish talent with glowing comic credentials including Aimee Lou Wood, Lolly Adefope, Nicola Coughlan and Jessica Hynes are squandered.

The perpetual bright spot is Nick Frost’s sweet and dim-witted dung shoveller, who wholeheartedly believes in the existence of dragons and a giant mollusc that ushers us into the afterlife when our time is up. Time runs out for Vowell’s picture before the half-hearted and preordained redemption of Wood’s insufferable, petulant head of state, who catches one whiff of revolution blowing in the wind and heads for the nearest hills.

Spirited woodcutter Humble Joan (Coughlan) leads this bloodthirsty insurrection against unpopular queen Dagan (Wood), who inherited the throne from her tyrant father Ur-Nammu (Murray McArthur). The toppled monarch is gleefully deluded about her predicament and goes on the run with her trusted servant Shulmay (Adefope) in search of a new army to restore her rightful place on the throne.

Neighbours King Ivarr (Paul Kaye) and King Guthrum (John Macmillan) from across the sea may provide a lifeline. Bobik (Frost) agrees to accompany Dagan and Shulmay on their exhausting 140-mile odyssey to the coast with treacherous royal adviser Leofwine (Hynes) and two guards in lukewarm pursuit. En route, the fugitives seek kindness and counsel from the queen’s subjects including Felix the ironmonger (James Acaster) and Witgar the baker (Nitin Ganatra).

Seize Them! is a disappointment by virtue of the proven comic artistry behind and in front of the camera. In every respect, Dagan’s journey of self-discovery is a slog and the few deserved chuckles including an abortive attempt to throw a dead body off a cliff only heighten the nagging regret about what might have been. If Vowell’s picture was a court jester, it would be tossed into a dungeon for failing to make merry.

– Sarah Lee