Theo Robertson With a premise of " Man hires a female escort " and a title of COCKATOO I was expecting the punchlines to write themselves in a very lazy manner and the male lead played by Alan Dukes to channel the spirit of the late Sid James . Thankfully this doesn't happen , though wouldn't have had complaints from me if it had and makes a rather engaging , amusing and light hearted short film . You have to suspend disbelief slightly when the escort reads a long list of things she's not allowed to do which lead me to ask why on earth someone want to spend their money on an escort but I guess there wouldn't be a story here and it's not like there's any sex involved and that's not really the function of an escort anyway . The film does end on a massive punchline and a medal will be awarded to anyone who doesn't smile and let out a loud groan

bob the moo There is plenty in this film for sure. The idea is that a man struggling to move on from his ex of 6 months ago, hires a girl to come to his house and pretend to be her as part of the healing process. Although the look is right, something just isn't working although it may be that things work out well anyway – just like it did for one of the other girl's clients, a guy trying to get over the death of his pet cockatoo.Looking good and with an interesting idea, this film does work here and there but I did find that it didn't come together as a whole. The comedy element of the failed accents is nice but unevenly done but it transitions into a more serious moment based on coincidence and then offers a nice conclusion which it then damages with a rather clumsy joke based on a slang term. The handling of the tone is pretty well done but from the page to the screen it feels a little fragmented as if the ideas didn't all come together as I would have liked. The selling point is the performances because I really did enjoy these. The two main actors get the mix of comedy and serious just right, so that we can laugh but don't just see the situation as comedic. Dukes is the best as his jumpy and hurt character is well played although of course Brown delivers the jokes well with her inability to nail an English accent.There are aspects of this I liked and in any specific moment it was doing something interesting or entertaining, but as a whole it just didn't come together in one strong way – which is a problem for a film which is only 10 minutes long.