Benjamin

Stand-up comedian Simon Amstell's second film as writer/director after 2017 BBC mockumentary Carnage, is a more conventional drama about an indie film-maker struggling to emulate his swooned-over debut seven years later. Amstell's eponymous surrogate, played with natural verbal incontinence by Merlin star Colin Morgan, is a gay, vegan, bulimic social liability crippled by an "inability to love" (a trait he shares with the protagonist of his pretentious sophomore effort), his life measured out in guest-lists and finger food. But what could have been overindulgent is lifted by Amstell's casually witty, knowing dialogue - the launch of a new chair elicits the line, "I really like that it's not something you'd want to sit on." Joel Fry (from TV's Plebs) brings complexity to a comic who's not funny, and Phénix Brossard sweetens as the French object of Benjamin's affections - a singer performing original songs by Amstell and ex-Klaxon James Righton. While an interpretive performance sequence - immersively danced by a cameoing Ellie Kendrick - counts as a soft target, the joke always rebounds on Benjamin, whose film-within-a-film is savaged by real-life critic Mark Kermode after a London film festival screening.