Is Loqueesha the worst film ever made?

Jeremy Saville’s movie – about a white man who pretends to be a black woman – is flawed in many ways, which we will now list

I don’t know where to start. I do not know where to start. Let’s get the synopsis out of the way: Loqueesha (Amazon Prime Video, for some reason, streaming now) sees Jeremy Saville as Joe, a down-on-his-luck bartender who is really good at advice but can’t get his dream job as a late-night call-in agony aunt because – and this is what the movie is saying, not me – because he is white. Actual line, said aloud, to nobody: “Ah, they want black women and minorities. They don’t want a white guy like me!”

The ensuing plot device is one of the more offensive in history: Joe re-records his audition tape as Loqueesha, a monstrous pantomime of a black woman’s voice, submits anonymously, finds great success and huge fame. A real film would end with – oh, I don’t know, this completely crashing down? Him in jail? – but I think this is a film made to fulfil a bet made at a Klan members’ barbecue, so instead he thrives and succeeds.

Too much to even mention, but some notes: the literal opening line of this film is a guy in a bar saying: “… and I have to put on this monkey suit … every single day!” Every single supporting character who endorses Joe’s scheme has deliberately been cast as a PoC, including his love interest who, in the film’s penultimate scene, finally calls him out for being racist and sexist (the first time this concept has been introduced to the film audience!) then, bafflingly, kisses him.

This film is so badly made – I don’t think there was a lighting guy, because the actors variously flush purple, green and blue depending on the ambient light around them; the sound guy, if he exists, apparently recorded the audio on a piece of string tied to a tin can – it’s so badly made that in three separate scenes (THREE SCENES!) Saville has visible food on his chin; there is a section where a newsreader’s mouth briefly flips upside down because they clearly had to overdub it in post and the remaining VFX budget was, basically, “After Effects 30-day trial”.

The Reason You Haven’t Seen Any Of These Actors In Anything Ever Before Is Because They Belong In The Hague. A distraught bridge jumper is used as a plot point so clumsily that I think it technically breaks media law. Joe at no point learns a lesson in this movie and, in fact, there’s a complicated setup where he teaches a black woman a morality tale about race, one of many moments where you pause and yell, to no one: “WHO IS THIS FILM FOR?????” Loqueesha’s advice is supposed to be clever and funny and it is consistently neither. Joe is cast as “the smart guy” in every scene so there’s literally no journey because he’s never wrong. And the ending sees the entire city learn that Loqueesha is actually a white man, and they choose to forgive him.

I hold everyone who had a hand in this personally responsible. I hold whoever rented the 4K cameras to Jeremy Saville personally responsible. Camera-hire companies should have to see scripts before they give their equipment out! They should be up in court, too! The worst film ever made. The worst film ever made. Worse than The Room, in every way. The one-star rating it currently has on IMDb is actively generous. I cannot believe this film got made.

Contributor

Joel Golby

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
Galdem Sugar: can a grime reality show ever work?
Instead of sipping cocktails and having fights, the female rappers work out in a dog poo-covered park in Edmonton

Issy Sampson

25, May, 2019 @10:00 AM

Article image
Modern Love: a show made entirely of coffee, scarves and Ed Sheeran
Amazon’s take on the New York Times cult column is warm, A-list touting and just a little bit exactly like Netflix’s Easy

Joel Golby

12, Oct, 2019 @10:00 AM

Article image
Mrs Brown's Boys: how did the worst show on TV become a festive must-watch?
Somehow, without anyone noticing, the dire BBC sitcom has become the centrepiece of Christmas TV. How on Earth did this happen?

Joel Golby

21, Dec, 2019 @11:00 AM

Article image
The Wedding Coach: glossy reality TV format is a marriage made in heaven
Comedian Jamie Lee assists stressed couples as they get closer to the big day in this strangely addictive and deeply nice new show

Joel Golby

03, Apr, 2021 @10:00 AM

Article image
Murder Mystery: the film that asks – what is Jennifer Aniston doing?
Viewed by 30 million people on its opening weekend, this woefully average comic caper is an odd addition to the actor’s CV

Joel Golby

29, Jun, 2019 @10:00 AM

Article image
Big brows and tight waistcoats: inside the mediocre Jonas Brothers film
Chasing Happiness fails to offer any analysis of how and why the boyband happened in the first place

Joel Golby

01, Jun, 2019 @10:00 AM

Article image
Talking Heads is back – and as gloriously miserable as ever
Sarah Lancashire and Jodie Comer star in a revival of Alan Bennett’s kitchen-table monologues that makes for perfect 2020 TV

Joel Golby

20, Jun, 2020 @10:00 AM

Article image
Goths, wrestlers and lube-filled paddling pools: is this the strangest gameshow ever?
With Apocalypse Wow, ITV2 has finally pushed the boundaries of television beyond what was previously possible

Joel Golby

10, Jul, 2021 @10:00 AM

Article image
Requiem: a spooky nail-biter with traces of Scooby-Doo
In the BBC’s rural Welsh thriller, Matilda makes for a refreshingly bold heroine, drawn to dark goings-on as a hyena is to a rotting carcass

Fiona Sturges

27, Jan, 2018 @11:00 AM

Article image
Homeland: Claire Danes sulks her way through more relentless catastrophising
What was once unmissable event TV is now struggling to find its place in Trump’s world. But one thing’s for sure: Carrie loves scrambled eggs

Fiona Sturges

17, Feb, 2018 @11:00 AM