Downton Abbey has been a beloved franchise since it premiered in 2010, spawning six seasons, five Christmas specials and a movie trilogy. One great — and possibly too rarely used — way to pay homage to such a phenomenon is to parody it, and that’s the treatment Fackham Hall is giving the British period drama. The spoof hit the 2025 movie calendar this weekend with a brand of humor that’s lifting the spirits of many critics, while inspiring little more than a light chuckle from others.
Fackham Hall features the charming pickpocket Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe) accidentally landing a job at the titular English manor. From there, Noone climbs the ranks and becomes involved with the lady of the house, Rose Davenport (Thomasin McKenzie). However, when murder strikes the manor, Eric is framed, throwing the house into chaos. Elaina Patton of IndieWire rates the film a B, writing that it’s filled with non-stop gags, from puns to wordplay to slapstick stunts, but still packs in plenty of plot. Patton writes:
The film is bursting with witticisms, pop culture references, cheap gags, and signs scrawled with various puns, including ‘Tailor Swift,’ to varying comic success. With nearly 280 jokes crammed in, according to the writers’ count, there’s barely time to digest the jest before it’s on to the next bid for a laugh. That’s not to say that the film’s over-the-top approach to comedy doesn’t work, or that it hasn’t been done before. Much like Airplane or The Naked Gun, Fackham Hall succeeds because it effectively skewers its target genre, and its top-tier actors know how to deliver a joke to its furthest possible endpoint.
Pete Hammond of Deadline agrees that director Jim O'Hanlon and the writers have managed to include a story that gives structure to its “fair share of LOL moments.” There are more hits than misses in this “genuinely guffaw-inducing comedy,” Hammond says, writing:
Rather than just throw everything at the wall to see what sticks, this one also is smart enough to craft an actual story you can follow that has some credibility all on its own, plus a love story at its center. Match that with Fackham Hall‘s singular sense of British humor, at times even with the throwaway lines more subtle than, say, Marlon Wayans’ Scary Movie jokefests.
Patrick Gibbs of SLUG Mag says Fackham Hall is an even bigger surprise than the well-reviewed The Naked Gun reboot, with plenty of hilarious gags and a “commitment to fun above all else” that the critic finds thoroughly infectious. Gibbs continues:
Fackham Hall is a frivolous and even stupid movie with nothing meaningful to contribute to anything, and I’m watching it a second time as I write this review to drink in every glorious moment. I had no idea that I needed a new Naked Gun movie, and even less of an idea that I needed Fackham Hall, but between the two, my spirits have been lifted enough to add another 10 years to my life, and you should never underestimate the power that laughter brings to the human spirit. I shall not, and I shwill not, forget it.
Owen Gleiberman of Variety says the movie is “amusing enough” but it never shocks you into riotous laughter. The critic notes that even when Fackham Hall is trying to be obscene, the jokes land too softly. Gleiberman writes:
Fackham Hall, directed by Jim O’Hanlon from a grab-bag-of-jokes script by five writers (Steve Dawson, Andrew Dawson, Tim Inman, Jimmy Carr, and Patrick Carr,), is one of those parodies that does a scrupulous job of recreating the world it’s parodying. I generally think that makes a spoof funnier, but in this case the tone is so restrained that most of the jokes don’t fully detonate. They land, when they do at all, in the light chuckle zone.
Nell Minow of RogerEbert.com falls right in the middle of the Fackham Hall reviews, giving the movie 2 stars out of 4. The secret to the really great parody movie is truly loving whatever it is you’re making fun of, Minow writes, but these jokes don’t land with the strength the writers would have wanted. According to the critic:
Its watchability comes from the very elements it is trying to undermine: the fairy-tale setting of a huge country house, antique furniture, and beautiful people wearing gorgeous period clothes, speaking in accents ranging from elegant upper-class to cute commoner. Most of its jokes are based less on observing what makes these works so popular than on what is silliest or most outrageous. But what’s funny in the writers’ room does not always work on screen. An example of the tone is the title, the name of the characters’ residence, which a character says aloud to make sure we know it sounds like a crude insult to everyone involved.
Despite falling flat for a few of the critics, Fackham Hall has gotten a primarily positive response, drawing 86% from 28 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience score lines up so far with 82%. The film opened in U.S. theaters on Friday, December 5. So, if this sounds like a spoof movie you don’t want to miss, check your local listings.
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