Unilad describes itself as “a major youth platform for breaking news and relatable viral content.” Its review of “Four Lions” is enthusiastic and attempts an inspiring ending: “By reducing homegrown jihadi terrorism to the whims of loveable morons, Morris gave Brits an undying gift: the last laugh.”
Well, all right. I’m sure Four Lions is a real laugh riot, an explosion of good fun, and I hope it doesn’t bomb. But “the last laugh”? Who gets that remains to be seen. If the producers of Four Lions think Britain is no longer vulnerable to the forces that hit it on July 7, 2005, they are naive. “Hogan’s Heroes,” which made Nazis look like idiots, was made long after the war. “Four Lions” has been made while the war is still going on.
“Four Lions Made Suicide Bombing Funny, And That’s Okay,” by Cameron Frew, Unilad, May 7, 2020:
‘Is he a martyr or a f*cking jalfrezi?’ 10 years ago, Four Lions put the ‘ha’ in jihad.
Lest we forget the splutter-worthy edge of Chris Morris, The Day Today and Brass Eye’s satirical maestro satirical maestro who brought the media’s early millennium child abuse hysteria to its knees with the 2001 special entitled Paedogeddon.
On paper, his follow-up, a post-7/7 Islamic terrorism farce on British soil was tantamount to self-destruction. Yet, through an unprecedented blend of guffaws, heartbreak and horror, the film is both an outrageous tonic and grounded warning. Comedy and tragedy, united in death.
On July 7, 2005, 52 people were killed and more than 700 injured in a coordinated attack on London’s public transport system by three suicide bombers on the Underground and one on a double-decker bus. The terrorists saw themselves motivated by more than the ‘tangible commodities this world has to offer’.
Morris’s pride of British Muslim lions, of which there’s actually five, ostensibly boast similar extremism; warring against ‘western imperialist culture, superficial materialism and the capitalist church of McDonald’s’. Smartly though, these wannabes are given credence on a leash: stupidity is the prevailing constant, not fear….
While his peers are hapless, Omar’s domestic bliss makes his willingness to ascend ‘to the top floor’ via violence even more unnerving. His wife is supportive of the mission, and in a bedtime story for his boy, he uses Pumba and Simba to explain his motives. He mocks his orthodox, pedant brother, whose chimes from the Quran contradict his vision of faith….
By reducing homegrown jihadi terrorism to the whims of loveable morons, Morris gave Brits an undying gift: the last laugh.
Ewanda says
Is no one going to comment on the fact that Google now has “:Southern Poverty Law Center” coming up FIRST when “jihad watch” is typed in? Every time in the past jihad watch=jihad watch!! This is sick and dangerous to all of the West’s future because Southern Poverty Law Center has bubble-wrapped itself from the truth and the lies they promote discourages people who need to get to the truth from advancing to the Robert Spencer’s wisdom. We have to get things back to normal again as soon as possible. Anyone got any suggestions as to how do set things right?
James Lincoln says
Ewanda,
That is true, and very disturbing.
That’s why I have switched to duckduckgo.com as my search engine. Jihad Watch comes up as the first selection.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=hr&atb=v188-1
TNBob says
James has the right idea. Unless we put those godless liberal technocrats out of business we will never be able to stamp out their Nazi-like deception of the people. Pray that God will bankrupt them, then go somewhere else like Duckduckgo to do search.
Wellington says
I’ll comment, Ewanda, and aver this: Google is a greater problem than the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is itself bad enough, because Google has a world-wide influence that the SPLC, disgusting, hypocritical and ignorant organization which it is, can only dream of having.
In summary and all that: The SPLC is awful, but far more awful and menacing is Google. All of which is dispositive of that cruel reality that the more you have ignorance combined with great power ordinarily the more tragic the ensuing results will be.
mortimer says
Monopolies do not serve the citizens well … they dictate to the citizens. Can the legal profession help us to take our power back from these robber barons?
John Magne Trane says
Here in Norway the top two are the wiki pages (Norwegian and English), then the racists in SPLC, The first positive site about JW, is from document.no, with an article on page 5. So link number 45.
I still haven’t been given a link to jihadwatch itself, so wont bother further.
Google is run by racists.
Use DuckDuckGo instead.
Boromir's Horn says
Google search *anything* looking for the conservative side of any subject and you spend the rest of the day in frustration. It’s much worse today than it was just a few years ago.
Here’s something you won’t find in google: What do you call Four Lions in quicksand?
Quatro, Cinco
Dude says
I remember seeing it by accident, and it was Dumb + Dumber on steroids. And let’s let’s face it, you gotta be plenty dumb to be a jihadi, even though your mother is praying for a martyr son to send her to paradise tomorrow. That’s all you’ve really ever meant to her.
But the movie really illustrated the idiocy of JIHAD and its fans. No concept of life, so they concentrate on death. DUH
It seems everything I now write ends with that same word: DUH. The great classical influences on my literary style have now become Homer Simpson and Billie Eilish.
FYI says
Would muslims be OK with the islamic version of Dumb and Dumber..
Abdool and Abdoool?
How about a musical:504 houri brides for 7 devoutly islamic Jihadi Brothers?
Maybe something for the kids:Perfect mo and his Magical Flying Donkey.That wouldn’t ridicule muhammed would it?I mean his MAGICAL WINGED FLYING HORSE with a woman’s head and a peacock tail,you know the one he travelled on from mecca to visit the mosque in Jerusalem{the one that didn’t exist in perfect mo’s time koran 17:1}?
A muslim Bond movie?Above it are Nineteen….Yet Another Infidel Dies Tomorrow…Jihad never ends?
“The name is Bond.Abdool bin Bond.Shaken not….{allahu akbar} ..KABOOM}
I could write the scripts myself and maybe the BBC{Leftard News World} could produce one of their islam-friendly series:how about the Jihadi with the Heart of Gold{he spares the muslim kid but he kills the Christian ones as allah commands}but then the bleeding heart,virtue-signalling lefties and the hypocritical legal fascists of the SPLC Gestapo might start bawling about “hate speech” and “islamophobia”
{Or…the Life of Brian Muhammed:the story of Brian,who accidently converts to islam after being told by the dawa folk that islam is a religion of peace,there is no death penalty for Apostasy and muhammed was the nicest man that ever lived and jihad is just a word invented by islamophobic infidel Crusaders and Israeli Zionist Jews}
ya see?Infidels are sooo much better at Humor…and Science and..Art..and music….
Thank God I’m an infidel.
gravenimage says
Very funny, FYI.
tim gallagher says
I get that ferocious satire, maybe like some of Jonathon Swift’s works, can cause damage to evil causes, and I’ll never see any of the work of these particular comedians, but that bit about reducing mass murderous scum of the earth Muslim suicide bombers to “loveable morons” sickens me. It seems really “off”. I just can’t see the humour in some of the shit that some of these “comedians” these days find humour in, and Muslim mass murderous vermin is one of those things. If Muslim terrorists don’t blow themselves up, then, to me, they are just scum to be wiped off the face of the earth. The innocent victims of these Muslim maggots, these “loveable morons”, aren’t here anymore, the plans they had for their lives are gone, so they surely ain’t laughing. But maybe I’m wrong, and maybe the ridicule these comedians are displaying might actually result in some Muslim saying, oh, those suicide bombers are fuckwits and rejecting that path in life. Pretty unlikely though. I suppose I just think there’s something wrong with “comedians” who think that Muslim terrorists are a source of humour. There’s plenty of other material to write their comedy about.
gravenimage says
UK Youth Mag: “Four Lions Made Suicide Bombing Funny, And That’s Okay”
……………………
Have Britons gotten “the last laugh”, even though they are still constant victims of Jihad terrorists? What insanity.
By the way, I was eager to see this movie when it first came out–I have always been a fan of mocking evil. But I found this movie oddly depressing and dispiriting at best. It was fairly well-made, but not in any way funny, and not clear that Jihad terror is actually an evil.
mortimer says
Someone did a composite video of jihadis accidentally blowing themselves up and their comrades as well. It was presented with mocking comments … a bit like James Bond (‘shocking!’). It was horrifying. The film-makers probably got the idea from that video.
Rob R (Brit stuck in Britainistan) says
Allow me to provide further insight for Americans.
Four Lions was one of the least funny things I have ever seen in my life. I meant that from a comedy point of view not just because I dislike the fact that it was trying to downplay terrorism. But essentially that’s all that it was anyway.
The satirist Chris Morris previously had a hit TV comedy called “Brass Eye” which made fun of over the top current affairs programs and TV news. It was very funny back in the day, to me. (It was made in 1996 and eventually shown on TV the next year, after Channel 4 hesitated over whether it was too controversial to show or not. I remember watching it for the first time in the early 2000s when I was a slacking student)
By the time we got to 2010 Chris Morris is getting old and all the aging lefty hipsters slobbered over “Four Lions” just because they wanted to pretend it was as funny as Brass Eye. It was not. It was just an incredibly limp, unfunny comedy by an old man. The makers of the film (and the actors) also wanted to pretend that if we somehow “make fun of” suicide bombers, then we can all pretend that Islam isn’t scary. Which of course is willful delusion By the way, the film wasn’t a big hit. Look on Wikipedia it only made 4 million pounds. Still a lot for something so weak, though.
This mindless moronic writer from “Unilad” is just mentioning it because he’s decided to pretend he’s an “intellectual” today by sucking up to a horrific medieval religion. The sad, nameless, generic ape will be back to writing about overpaid men kicking a ball around by tomorrow.
I always thought of Four Lions as an absolute hellish “sh1tshow” as they say, anyone who likes that is a total moron. I always thought the deluded embrace of this crap film was a sign that our country was doomed. Just thinking about something so lame, limp and brimming with delusion and terrorist-appeasement, always filled me with rage.
I should have tried as far back as 2010 to make plans to leave the UK but I come from a horrible dysfunctional family so I spent a lot of time being unemployed and feeling sorry for myself, not spending time in education, so I really can’t see a path where I can leave since I don’t have qualifications sadly.
gravenimage says
I know how you feel.
Jayell says
The Lion is supposed to be (?) an official symbol of Great Britain – it was the main feature of the British Railways logo, eggs from the old Egg Marketing Board Board had little lions stamped on them, etc. etc. Yet these gruesome specimens could never even pretend to get anywhere near representing anything that’s traditionally ‘British’, so if this is a bit more of the all-too-common cultural misappropriation that we’re supposed to tolerate from certain people these days, it’s utterly pathetic. Or maybe they see themselves as ‘lion-like’ in some other way? In which case the safest place for lions in civilised society id behind bars in a zoo – very appropriate, since so many of these ‘lions’ are already behind bars in Her Majesty’s Hotels in the UK.
gravenimage says
Jihadists really do refer to themselves as “Lions of Islam”.
Devilsinskirts! says
Four Lions was satire which the writer, Chris Morris, probably never imagined in 2010 ( the film’s release) would come to reality when the plot of bombing the London marathon became the real horror of the Boston Marathon three years later. The film itself has some amusing spots not least when they go to Afghanistan to meet the Taliban and even the Taliban think they are imbeciles. I think a film of this type is typical British comedy very much in the vein of Monty Python’s Life of Brian which was satire aimed not so much at Christianity but at religious fundamentalism and political extremism. I would say though that, some funny moments aside, Four Lions doesn’t come close to hitting the funny bone that Life of Brian did and still does after numerous watchings!
gravenimage says
This movie came out after the London Tube bombings.
R Russell says
It may be called a UK youth mag, but I only see England being spoken about.
gravenimage says
Is this *really* the only issue you have here?
Unilad is indeed sold throughout Great Britain, and does have stories about Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as well–although overall fewer than those about England.
Nemo Of Erewhon says
I don’t think anyone on the left, right or centre and definitely not any Muslims would find a parody of the attack on a Mosque in New Zealand very funny. Why is this considered “funny”.
dhans says
While I thought the movie was hilarious ( the first 20 minutes anyway, my weird sense of humor, I guess), I am seeing the point of the article. We view criminality, terrorism, and other catastrophes through the lens of humor to make them less threatening. The real world effect of this is twofold. First, it tries to reduce the appeal of the activity if it’s participants are viewed as buffoons. Secondly, it has the negative effect of lessening our response if we see the participants as unorganized and incompetents. The second effect seems to be the predominate one taking place if you examine the rampant crime numbers with no effective response by government, other than to let them shoot each other (in the US). The soft bigotry of low expectations is a truly horrible response for all parties.
gravenimage says
Your belief that criminals are just allowed to shoot each other in the United States is mistaken.