Why Has No One Made a Movie Like Absolutely Fabulous Yet?

It was while working as a video store clerk during a typical horrendously busy shift, (is it possible to detect sarcasm when it’s written down?) one day, that  I discovered the BBC television show Absolutely Fabulous. My love affair with “Ab Fab” remains to this day, evident by that fun for me/annoying to anyone else quality where I can quote any episode verbatim.

(I just have to take a moment to give a shout out to my old stomping ground, which closed its doors for good a couple of weeks ago. With Blockbuster and that other little company called Netflix around, this small independent  store gave the good fight as long as it could.  RIP Avenue Video. It makes me sad to think that my future children won’t know what a real video store was.)

Absolutely Fabulous is the adventures of two hedonistic London fashionistas, PR rep to the stars  Eddy (Jennifer Saunders) and her fashion director/best friend Patsy (Joanna Lumely). With jobs they rarely work at and access to more booze and  drugs then a hipster on a Saturday night,  Eddy and Patsy have two goals in life: 1.  Buy gorgeous things and 2.Have fun.

When you look beyond the obvious frivolity, it’s not hard to notice that  Absolutely Fabulous has more charm and guts then anything marketed to a North American female audience. And yes, I say that fully aware of another show out there about a group of fashionable New York ladies. If those ladies could get their own movie spin off, two in fact, then certainly the movies gods should realize the desperate need for an Eddy and Patsy adventure on the big screen.

Sadly just like Arrested Development coming back on the air or having gone through life not knowing who Snooki is,  I know an Absolutely Fabulous movie is a  pipedream.

First off, one  can’t deny that star/creator/writer Saunders and former Avengers babe Lumley  are getting up there in age.  NOT that that would stop me as a fan to going to see their movie.  I mention age simply  because I  doubt the ladies would even be interested in playing these characters  anymore, and there’s no way in hell that Absolutely Fabulous would work without them.

Eddy and Patsy are two of the biggest egomanics and addicts in television history, and yet you can’t help but love them. Making these characters likeable is  a testament to the brilliant work of these two  comediennes.  In 2009 Fox attempted to produce an American version of the show, and thankfully the pilot wasn’t picked up.

But the main reason I think  is Ab Fab would realistically never make it to the screen is  that for some reason, people don’t want to watch a female-driven  movie that’s about women simply having fun. Why does  the idea of a females going on an adventure in the movies  have to end  with them either driving off a cliff or getting married?

In the Absolutely Fabulous movie I imagine Eddy punching Anna Wintour  in the face and Patsy getting shit faced with Pete Doherty, all while they wear their Lacroix and film  a season of their reality show across London, Paris and New York. Now that’s a movie you’d want to see, wouldn’t you?

I don’t know. In my ideal world, Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie would be a international sensation after women everywhere realized it was ok to watch silly movies about ladies being fabulous. We didn’t have to pack ourselves into a theater to watch an uptight Katherine Heighl flirt badly with Gerald Butler. There would also  never be another bad sitcom or movie  out there where a beautiful skinny lady is married to a fat lazy dude. Tina Fey would be the biggest movie star in the entire world, and Sofia Coppola  the world’s greatest director. That’s just me.

Who would you want to see play Eddy & Patsy if they did make a movie?