The Duke of Edinburgh’s award was designed to address what Prince Philip’s former headmaster Kurt Hahn identified as the “six declines of modern youth”. In his feature debut, Ninian Doff (who has directed music videos for Run the Jewels and the Chemical Brothers) mines black comedy from the misconception that young people lack “fitness, initiative and enterprise, memory and imagination, skill and care, self-discipline and compassion”. It feels like Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz and Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers are reference points.
Troublemakers Dean (Rian Gordon), Duncan (Lewis Gribben) and DJ Beatroot (Viraj Juneja) must complete their DoE as punishment for setting a school toilet on fire; nerdy Ian (Samuel Bottomley) hopes it will look good on his CV. Lurking in the Scottish Highlands is the Duke (Eddie Izzard), an aristocratic baby boomer who wears a Hannibal-style mask and carries a shotgun. His mission is to teach ungrateful millennials to respect their elders. Hyperactive editing, the jittery rap score and an obligatory acid trip scene grate, but Doff’s social commentary is sharp. Katie Dickie is also drily funny as a sergeant who abandons her search for the local bread thief in the hope of catching an influx of “hip-hop terrorists”.
