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Summary[]

Guest House Paradiso is a 1999 film based on Rik and Ade's characters from Bottom. The plot places Richie and Eddie in charge of the worst hotel in Britain, and their normal routine of crap service, horrible food, and violent in-fighting is interrupted by the arrival of a beautiful runaway film star. The film features slightly different versions of the characters of Richie and Eddie, each having different surnames than those depicted in the television series. The film also does not directly reference any of the events of the television series or live shows.

Plot[]

It is early morning at the Guest House Paradiso, and Richie is talking in his sleep. After a very violent alarm call we are treated to Richie's early morning routine of deciding which of his identical cardigans to wear, and a minor case of accidental nipple piercing with the sharp end of his manager's name badge. A wide shot shows us that the setting for the film is a coastal hotel situated next to a nuclear power plant shaped like a large penis and testicles. Eddie, meanwhile, is meandering through the country lanes on his motorbike. The only problem is, he's asleep, and endures a series of near-misses with various other vehicles on the road.

Eddie miraculously makes it to the hotel alive, and the they both set about the business of the day. Their waiter, Pascal, is nowhere to be found, and Chef is drunk and has gorged himself on the hotel's entire supply of food. After Richie offends an adulterous couple staying in one of the rooms, he orders Eddie to perform waiter duties. Eddie ends up having a violent off-screen fight with Chef which possibly leaves him dead, forcing Eddie to do the cooking. After much bickering over the breakfast orders, the pair have a fight of their own, resulting in Eddie getting thrown out of the window. Richie is subsequently knocked out cold by Mr Johnson, who has had enough of waiting for his breakfast.

When Richie finally rouses, Eddie informs him that most of the guests have checked out, apart from the dim-witted Mrs Foxfur who Richie decides to unsuccessfully steal some gold teeth from. But all is not lost when the Nice family arrive and they are shown to their room. Richie's over-enthusiasm leads him to break into their room whilst they are out, where he finds a spiked crotchless rubber bikini amongst their luggage. Unable to resist the temptation, he tries it on, but is alarmed to find that Italian starlet Gina Carbonara has arrived at the hotel to escape from her abusive fiancé Gino Bolognese. Eddie assists him in removing the bikini, and sets about showing the lovely Gina to her room.

Later on in the evening, dinner is up, consisting of the fish Eddie found after he was thrown out of the window earlier in the film. Gina however prefers to dine alone in her room, and only has a salad. Mr Nice meanwhile discovers that his bikini is missing and approaches Richie about it in front of the other guests. He denies any knowledge, but is seen on CCTV running down the upstairs corridor whilst wearing the bikini. In response to this, Richie immediately uses Eddies head to repeatedly smash the VCR to fully claim himself not accountable, until the VCR malfunctions and ejects the tape.

Mr Nice confiscates the tape and sleeps with it in his hands intending to show it to the police the next day, forcing Richie to initiate a very daring retrieval mission (which was nearly foiled as Mr Nice's son, who was beginning to suffer from food poisoning, noticed Richie's hand and crushed it into the cupboard door whilst trying to alert Mr and Mrs Nice. Richie pokes Mr Nice's son in the eye and manages to successfully get his hand back into the cupboard in time before they both wake up.)

Later on, Eddie was called by Richie in Room 6 to get him out of the cupboard as the trap door inside was shut. Rumbles from the rooms signals the beginning of a mass incidence of horrific food poisoning, but not before Gino Bolognese arrives and demands to see Gina. Gino forces Eddie to serve them some food whilst he conducts the wedding himself against her will.

Eddie retires to the bar and lets in his three chums from the power plant next door, who use their Geiger counters to find the fish they served for dinner; radioactive fish that were being shipped for safe disposal. The three workers scarper away to tell the authorities whilst Richie and Eddie discover that the guests have become violently ill from the evening's supper, exhibiting such symptoms as uncontrollable flatulence and extreme projectile vomiting. Gino in particular suffers the worst when he expels an enormous green bolus which rolls down the corridor as Richie, Eddie and Gina try to escape.

The other guests vomit onto Gino, and as he is forced backwards, he falls out of the hotel into the sea. The three reach the front door as a group of mysterious men arrive in black suits who offer to trade them several million pounds as well as tickets to the Caribbean and passports to leave the country in exchange for their suitcases on condition that they never speak of the incident again. As Richie and Eddie trade suitcases (although Eddie makes hesitation to surrender his suitcase, he eventually does so and looks at Gina in disappointment), Richie asks shall they shake on the deal. The mysterious man, who notices Richie's hand covered in the radioactive vomit replies that he'd rather not.

The film concludes with Richie, Eddie and Gina living it up on a tropical island. Gina thanks them both for killing her boyfriend, and crouches down to give Richie a little treat.

Cast[]

Rik Mayall as Richie Twat

Adrian Edmondson as Edward Elizabeth Ndingombaba

Helene Mahieu as Gina Carbonara

Vincent Cassell as Gino Bolognese

Simon Pegg as Mr Nice

Bill Nighy as Mr Johnson

Fenella Fielding as Mrs Foxfur

Steven O’Donnell as Chef

Quotes[]

  • Mrs Foxfur: Morning, Twat.
  • Mr Johnson: Look, Mr Twat...
  • Richie: It's pronounced Thwaite!
  • Mr Johnson: Well it's spelled 'twat,' T W A T, TWAT!
  • Richie: Could you keep your voice down please? We have normal guests as well, you know.
  • Gina Carbonara: Good evening Mr Twat.
  • Richie: (Laughs) It's cunt.
  • Richie: (Whispering) Damn.. again.
  • Richie: Gina Carbonara! The melons from Milan!
  • Eddie: Yeah, the nipples from Naples!
  • Richie: The rump from Rome!
  • Eddie: The rectum from Reykjavík!
  • Eddie: Hang on, that's not quite right, is it?

Trivia[]

  1. The character of Chef is played by Steven O'Donnell, best known for playing Spudgun in the Bottom TV series.
  2. In interview, Rik Mayall said that he considered the film a 25th anniversary celebration of his friendship with Ade Edmondson.
  3. As at 2021, the film has the longest continuous vomiting scene in film history, at 6 minutes. This is longer than similar scenes depicted in films such as Team America: World Police, and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.
  4. Although the location of the hotel is never mentioned in the film, the building used in the exterior shots is in the Isle of Wight.
  5. In terms of continuity, it is possible that the action takes place between the second and third live shows, given that both characters are seen to leave the UK and end up on a desert island, the setting for Bottom Live 3: Hooligan's Island.
  6. The script was written during Rik's recovery from the quad-bike accident that almost killed him in 1998. 
  7. Interestingly, when Gino Bolognese gets thrown out the window to his death, his last words “I just wanted a shag!” share a similar vein to Richie. So it could be possible that Gino is an Italian version of Richie.
  8. Simon Pegg's first feature film appearance.
  9. Although not mentioned on screen, the hotel was allegedly owned by Richie's Great Uncle Gervais who constructed the network of crawlspaces in the building so he could spy on the guests. This was discussed by Rik Mayall in a behind the scenes documentary.
  10. The film features one of, if not the most, violent fights between Richie and Eddie, during the scene where the two assault one another in the hotel kitchen.
  11. The candle-in-the-eye gag was achieved by applying a latex prosthesis to Rik Mayall's face which Ade then inserted a lit candle into. In behind the scenes footage on the DVD, Mayall is seen messing around after having the makeup applied.

 Continuity[]

  1. The film shares common themes with the Bottom television show, however none of the events of the show, or live shows, are referenced directly in the film.
  2. Eddie's penchant for building bizarre and complex contraptions, as seen in Holy and Dough, is revisited in a scene early in the film when Richie unwittingly triggers a Rube Goldberg type device built by Eddie to fool Richie into thinking he is at the hotel when in fact he is out drinking.
  3. The sign on the door of the Honeymoon Suite is misspelt 'Honeymoon Suet', consistent with earlier references in the TV show to Richie and Eddie's difficulty with spelling.
  4. Richie, despite having an apparently microscopic penis, gets said organ inexplicably trapped in the till drawer, similar to how he gets it trapped in the front door of Mr Rottweiller's flat in Gas.
  5. Richie, believing he has privacy, decides to have a cheeky tug when he sees a clip for an erotic thriller on the television, similar to how he does the same in the Bottom episode Contest when he is watching Miss World.
  6. Richie repeats the phrase, "soi desant", from the episode Break just before he falls out of the window.
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