The comic strip at times dances a fine line between traditional comedy, parody and drama. That's not strictly a bad thing, I'd take a comedy that handles drama well over just a poor quality comedy any day. 'Susie' is essentially a parody drama of those heated and lusty stories of free thinking women having multiple affairs and living their best life, only to find a slightly hollow experience at the end of it as their world comes crashing down once the lies have been revealed.
Susie is in a relationship with Martin, but cheating on him with Dave, and about to cheat on both of them with a pop star named Gary.
The humour in this one really is down to the fact that in these dramas the women who do what they want are usually shown to be remorseful or regret their free wheeling ways.
Susie on the other hand isn't bothered. And quite happily makes blunt decisions quickly depending on whatever going on.
That's about half the humour for this story, with the other half being Garry the popstar listlessly bounding around his country estate in a drug fueled haze getting his staff to help him with everything, having a vision of wanting to be a land working farmer...but non of the volition to actually BE a land working farmer.
I think if those Jilly cooper-esq novels are your thing, you'll quite enjoy this, but unfortunately to someone who isn't a dedicated reader of steamy fiction...as of 2024...the lines between parody and legitimacy have been blurred beyond recognition.
A little too subtle for its own good, to modern audiences it's just too 'straight cut' to really get the laughs in. Dawn French is really good fun here as Susie...she gets the tone, but I think she really nails this type of 'self aware, but blunt' style of performance best in things like 'Murder most horrid'.
I can appreciate what it's trying to do, but I ultimately wasn't won over.
source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/susie-1984/
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