Must admit I've never seen any Horrible Histories on TV, but the actors sounded impressive in this one, and I love Lee Mack and Rupert Graves, so I thought I'd have a look. I thought it just not at all funny, and loathed the musical sections. If children are likely to enjoy it, then it's a harmless piece of work, because there was a lot of interesting Roman history thrown in.
I had no idea what to expect from this as I have only seen snippets of the TV series.
I rather enjoyed the set-up and the great cast - grumpy dad Nick Frost and an old-looking Rupert Graves, with Sebastian Croft perfectly cast as Atti the geek Roman teenager main character. Other actors do well too. It rumbles along like a Brittanic cart on an unmetalled road.
The songs are TRULY DREADFUL so I fastforwarded through them and the awful dance routines which, I presume, are designed to appeal to DA YOOF, who are used to these sort of songs in The Greatest Showman etc. Not one memorable song though.
BUT the script is passable with some gags that made me laugh and good old-fashioned fun, word play, visual humour. Of course there has to be the strong independent female character who is superior to the boy in every way - a tiresome modern trope, that.
Not history documentary so I shall not be too harsh about anything - after all, the brilliant Gladiator gets it wrong too often on purpose to give the audience what they EXPECT from ancient Romans.
3 stars
Wasn't a great deal of actual history in this - sure the outline facts were correct and the film was set in one particular time and setting, but the whole thing was set in Britain, so it was basically about the Romans trying to subdue the Iceni, etc. (despite a side issue to inter-"racial" love story) and nothing to do with their whole way of life, structure, army, conquests, etc The modern-day rapping, dancing and singing would help younger viewers remember some areas of the history but it still left me hankering after the Monty Python "What did the Romans do for us?" scenario