Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Cadet Kelly is the best movie I’ve ever seen in my friggin’ life
Ben McCarthy
Genre: Bouffon, Clown, Comedy, Stand-Up
Venue: Buttercup at Underbelly, George Square
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Ben McCarthy really likes the 2002 film Cadet Kelly. He loves it. He worships it. Part fanboy, part film critic, this unhinged character does everything in his ability to convince us why Cadet Kelly is the best movie ever made.
Review
McCarthy enters the stage and we know exactly what he’s going to be like. Dirty, chaotic, absurd and bouffonish. He embodies the grotesque. He wears a shirt with Cadet Kelly on it and a pair of underwear almost hidden beneath the shirt. His hair is messy and he reminds us of that one friend who’s probably a genius, but couldn’t care about anything in the world. What unfolds over the next hour is pure absurd humour as he tries to convince us why Cadet Kelly is the best film ever made.
It’s interesting to see a clown like McCarthy. He’s yelling at the audience, flipping them off for not having seen the film, disgusting in his personal hygiene and somehow all of that is okay. I believe it’s really difficult to be an unpleasant clown. Clowns are often taught to connect with the audience. And most clowns do so by being pleasing and nice. But not McCarthy. He wants to connect with the dirt inside you. He wants you to look at the dirt within you and know that you’re not so different from him.
Lecoq tells the story of Bouffons as creatures who live in the underground world, and they only come out on the day of the carnival to mock the elites. McCarthy’s modern-day Bouffon lives in the bedroom, rotting and clocking a very long screentime, before he comes out and mocks us for thinking we have elite taste in art. He does so by getting into every single detail that makes this film so great, according to him.
McCarthy, while being a virtuoso of absurdity and comic timing, is also very clever and skilful. His show consists of a variety of ways in which he proves the greatness of Cadet Kelly and his love for cinema. In one particularly derailed moment, he recreates a controversy involving Christian Bale and has a hypnotic hold over us as he becomes Bale for over four minutes. That bit will stay with me for a very long time. As well as those moments when he looked at a photograph of Larry Shaw, director of Cadet Kelly, trapped in a rectangular acrylic brick with glitter in it. We all want someone who looks at us the way McCarthy looks at Shaw.
CADET KELLY IS THE BEST MOVIE I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY FRIGGIN LIFE is a perfect 11pm watch. It’s light-hearted, whimsical and very funny. At times I found myself searching for more depth in the show, maybe some commentary about the human condition. And soon I realised not every clown show needs to change the world. Some just need to be shows where you can sit back and laugh out loud after a long day as the performer obsesses over a rather silly film.
