Bill (2015)

Bill is a 2015 comedy, created by and starring various people from the TV show Horrible Histories. It follows a young ‘Bill Shakespeare’, who has not yet written famous plays such as Romeo and Juliet or Much Ado About Nothing. Instead, he’s been struggling to find a career in literally anything (acting and playing guitar), and has only just decided to become a playwright, to the dismay of his wife. He then gets caught up in an assassination attempt against the Queen by the King of Spain (of Spain).

First of all, the structure of the film is perfect, for two reasons. The first is the fact that the film is only over 90 minutes long, meaning that it doesn’t overstay its welcome at all, leaving the audience wanting more and more. The second is that, unlike other sketch-comedy type films such as Life of Brian, Bill’s structure actually manages to connect all its different sketch’s together seamlessly, through having these specific sketch’s appear as they fit well in the characters journey. Both of these create a film that never gets boring, and is constantly entertaining.

The film would also not function at all if it wasn’t for this brilliant cast. Not only do they do a brilliant job playing several different characters (Mathew Baynton not only portrays ‘Bill’, but also portrays ‘Lord Burghley’, ‘English messenger’, etc, etc.). They also manage to deliver this intentionally ‘awkward’ style of comedy perfectly, making sure that everything feels emotionally true for their character, and not just going overboard. If they didn’t do this so well, the film may be rendered unwatchable, as this type of comedy is very particular.

You can tell the creators behind this film were inspired by the Monty Python films, due to the quick pace of ‘awkward’ humour, albeit this film can actually be viewed by an entire family without anyone getting uncomfortable. Look at the recurring gag of the man who always finishes speaking about the king of Spain (of Spain) last. That joke is already funny the first time, but it becomes even funnier as the film continues, because he keeps on making the same mistake.

The visual storytelling is another reasons why the comedy works so well. This isn’t a film where every gag is shot in a similar way, each gag has a unique visual quality to it. The scene in which a Spanish guard is unable to shoot his crossbow at the intruder walking towards him, is shot in one take, emphasizing how weirdly easy it is for the intruder. A completely different example, is the chase scene in which ‘Bill’ runs away after he’s been framed as being a catholic, which is shot hand-held, using shaky-cam, and is quickly edited together, for it only to be revealed that no one’s chasing him, which is hilarious. In both cases, the visual storytelling arguably makes the gag better, by using visually delivering the gag in a unique kind of way.

In conclusion, Bill is a hilarious film, managing to take it its influences and even manages to improve on them in several ways, meaning that it never grows stale. With very creative visuals; consistently funny dialogue; and pitch perfect structure. This is simultaneously a great film for fans of this style of comedy, and also a great introduction for younger audiences of this type of comedy, meaning that you have no excuse to not watch this!