Absolutely Anything (2015)

Terry Jones nursed this script for twenty years, and the finished film carries the fatigue of that long gestation. Simon Pegg plays Neil Clarke, a London schoolteacher handed limitless power by a galactic council deciding whether humanity deserves to survive. The premise is H. G. Wells diluted into a forgotten sitcom pilot, and the execution admits as much. Gags land with a thud. The effects appear borrowed from a 1990s children's programme. The Monty Python reunion promised by the voice cast amounts to a few squawking cameos from the surviving members. It is a melancholy note on which to conclude a career.

The cultural inventory here is thin, and the film seems content to keep it that way. Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal populate the supporting ranks; their presence goes unremarked, which means the film neither congratulates itself nor gives them much to do. Catherine, played by Kate Beckinsale, exists to be pursued. She manages one mild rebuke about controlling men before the plot resumes its courtship. Global warming enters as one of Neil's benevolent fixes, and the film promptly punishes the impulse by plunging the planet into an ice age. That is a punchline, not a position.

The stated moral is that magic cannot mend the world, and that the aliens judge compassion as weakness. The film shrugs this at us without ever climbing a pulpit. Elsewhere the ledger is bare. The worldwide obesity gag is a fat joke, which places it at some distance from any affirmation of bodies. Race, sexuality, neurodivergence, and the rewriting of history never surface. A dog gets the last laugh, and honestly, the dog has the best material.