Kevin & Perry Goes Large. Brief story behind the movie

Next on our list of highly educational films about electronica is 2000’s Kevin and Perry’s goes large, about two jerks who fly to Ibiza with a suitcase of condoms to meet their happiness. Kevin and Perry were originally characters in an English sketchcom where three actors dressed up as different types and one of the characters in the half-hour show were these two dorks, the British Beavis and Butthead, who are struggling to wait to get laid. Harry Enfield invented and performed 14-year-old Kevin back in the early nineties, when he himself was in his early thirties. Next to him, like Sancho Panza, was always lurking a baggy friend of Perry’s—played by comedienne Cathy Burke.

The show was a success and after the fourth season the guys had the idea of making a full-length film. That’s where all the pitched tent gags came in. Harry Enfield shared an office in the same building with his former classmate, David Cummings, who used to play rock before working with the miniatures. Sharing lunch one day, David pitched Harry a couple of ideas for a film and so the strip had its own screenwriter. David, however, quickly regretted it: it was early November, and the text had to be finished by the end of December.

David Cummings

“It was brutal pressure,” recalls Cummings. “I did the first draft on my own and I was doing seven days a week. And once I’d finished the first draft, I sent it to Harry and he did his draft. So we never actually sat in a room together, we just bounced the script backwards and forwards between each other. And you know, Harry put in about two hundred knob gags. He gave it back to me, I’d try to take some of them out and then Harry put them all back in again. He was right and I was wrong!”

Britain in the late 90s is the centre of electronic music for almost every genre. Some of the biggest festivals, some of the most famous clubs and some of the highest DJ fees are in Britain. Cummings draws attention to then phenomenon of super DJs, with tickets for their sets going on sale months in advance of the coveted night, like rock concerts. Making fun of the stars of our era, he makes the theme of the super DJ demo the main theme of the film. Kevin and Perry turn into DJ brothers. In their room, they now have posters of the trendiest club Cream, badges of the Bedrock label and posters of progressive house icon Sasha. Electronic consultant is Judge Jules: DJ of the Year ’95 and host on Radio 1’s—we owe it to him for the authenticity of Fatboy Slim and dj@work of the t-shirts had on display. And, apparently, for that, the clipping King, hangs like a crown over his poster. He also picked up the soundtrack, plus the main theme about All I wanna do is do it.

Kevin and Perry, although they didn’t become a worldwide sensation (in the US, for example, people didn’t understand the humour of 40-year-old teenagers or an actress disguised as a boy), at home they got back their invested 3.5 million in the first week, earning a total of 16 million and becoming the top-grossing film at the British box office. The movie may seem stupid sometimes (or even all the time), but, as the creators said: “It’s a movie about 15-year-old boys that you wanted 15-year-old boys to go and see.”