text: The Daily Mail's Christopher Tookey had some choice things to say about this film, among them "watch it all the way through its 82 miserable minutes, and I guarantee you'll be shaking your head and asking: 'Have we really descended to this?' Yes, we have, for if ever a movie testified to the utter cynicism, tastelessness and moral corruption of those who commission and make British movies, it is this abomination". Tookey continues "aimed squarely at oafs with unwashed underwear, filthy minds and knuckles that graze the pavement when they walk, this sex comedy is so sordid, unfunny and malodorous that it is enough to put you off sex, and indeed films, for life", before concluding "Sex Lives of the Potato Men is not merely a truly vile film, it is symptomatic of a new national culture of instant self-gratification, yobbishness and sadism that is now being celebrated on screen". Normally I don't listen too closely to the critics, but in this case, Tookey was bang on the money. This film goes beyond bad, indeed, it goes beyond being merely unfunny and enters some bizarre parallel universe where every painful minute drags on for an hour and where the definition of 'hilarious' seems to be 'saying tw*t in a Brummie accent'. It's depressing to anyone with half a brain who grew up with the Goodies, Monty Python, Spitting Image, Not the Nine O'Clock News and Fawlty Towers.<br /><br />Ideally, Sex Lives Of the Potato Men would have quietly vanished after its cinema release and joined the equally dire Vix spin-off The Fat Slags (2004) and the ill-starred All Saints vehicle Honest (2000) in the celluloid graveyard, but as it seems destined for endless late night schedule-filling screenings and misguided "best film EVER!" raves from people who should know better, so I must apologise in advance for trying to right a wrong that the British film industry, in all its wisdom, has inflicted onto an undeserving world. Yes, I really am sorry to bring this one back from the celluloid dead, but I actually remember thinking "It can't be as bad as the critics said it was"...but, as God is my witness, it was WORSE.<br /><br />Acting - dire from start to finish, special mention to Mackenzie 'Albert Steptoe's legs on a young man's body' Crook.<br /><br />Soundtrack - cut and paste 'ladrock', mostly ska-based lager-lout-friendly pub jukebox piffle which brought back horrible memories of seeing those chirpy cockernee doin' the Lambeth Walk to a watered-down imitation of the Specials knob-shiners Madness on every single comedy / variety programme in the eighties...and 'Ace Of Spades' by Motorhead as the title music? What the hell...trying to evoke memories of one of the most genuinely exciting scenes ever offered by The Young Ones, indeed, ever offered by ANY comedy show?! Cheap shot, way below the belt.<br /><br />Script - written by a 12 year old who's just read every single back issue of Smut and Zit in one long Red Bull-fuelled session...SURELY? C'mon, no real, proper, worldly, grown-up person could possibly set this kind of retarded hogwash on paper? And Mark Gatiss was in it...Mark Gatiss...the least annoying member of the League of Gentlemen and Goodies fan taking part in such a towering heap of fly-blown cinematic excrement? 'One of the brightest British comedy stars'? Not any more he's not! On the subject of League Of Gentlemen, somebody give me a pair of lead-lined diver's boots and Steve 'face like a collapsed rectum' Pemberton and a long weekend in a soundproofed room before I die...PLEASE...<br /><br />Cinema, British or otherwise, just doesn't come much worse than this. Kent Bateman's The Headless Eyes (1971) is a new-wave masterpiece compared to this repugnant smut.