Burke and Hare Review

All in all, this is a fun little movie.  It is a comedic retelling of the Burke and Hare murders in Scotland in 1828.  I was skeptical about how they could turn such a story into a comedy but they did a pretty good job.  After all, by today's standards, the idea of murdering people to sell their corpses for medical research seems preposterous.  When you realize that it's a dark comedy that turns the leads into morons and not cold blooded killers, it comes off pretty well.

The best part of this film is the dynamic between Andy Serkis and Simon Pegg.  When they are doing their schtick together, you can't help but laugh.  Both do the physical comedy quite well.  I also really like the montage.  Having Tom Wilkinson give his monologue to the students and interspersing it with scenes of Pegg and Serkis doing their thing and Ronnie Corbett investigating was very well done.  Speaking of Ronnie Corbett, he is really good as Captain McKlintock.  He brings a bumbling buffoon quality that is needed for the character in a comedy.

So, the comedic effect was very well done but there is one aspect of this movie that bugged me a little bit.  They should have either delved deeper into the medical research rivalry between Wilkinson and Tim Curry or focused a little more on the relationship between Pegg and Isla Fisher and their production of Macbeth.  It seemed that the efforts in the movie were split between the two and both stories suffered for it.

Overall, though, I say see it.  It has enough laugh out loud comedy to make it entertaining.  I expected it to be deeper but should have known better given the story.  So, know that it isn't deep at all and just have some fun for an hour and a half.