Movies

Steve Coogan’s ‘Alan Partridge’ should stick to the small screen

Steve Coogan’s “Alan Partridge” character — a craven, narcissistic, provincial TV and radio host who has been amusing the Brits for more than 20 years — proves too much of a sketch-comedy creation to sustain a film.

Partridge, a smarmy throwback entertainer who graduated from “The Office” school of excruciating awkwardness, is sometimes amusing but more often not as he finds himself chief negotiator during a hostage situation at a small-town radio station where a fired ex-deejay (Colm Meaney) has gone bonkers.

As Partridge seizes the chance to make himself the story, Coogan and his writers occasionally deliver a brilliant idea (like a set of hostage demands recast as a radio jingle) but they would have been wiser to condense their thin story to sitcom length.