At the auditions for Absolutely Fabulous: The Early Years.

How many times has this happened to you? You stumble across a crime in progress, inform the authorities like a good citizen, but they don’t believe you so you decide to blackmail the criminals instead. Tell me, has that EVER worked out for you? Me neither. But do movie characters learn from our mistakes? No, they do not.

In High Heels and Lowlifes, Minnie Driver and Mary McCormack play a couple of spunky London gals who, after a drunken night on the town, tap into a cell phone conversation about a bank robbery in progress. After the local cops — or “bobbies” as they’re known over there — write them off as, well, a couple of spunky London gals who’ve had a drunken night on the town, they decide to ring up the robbers and demand a cut of the loot. The bad guys aren’t really in the mood to share, however, and instead try to kill them. The wankers!

The CB radio craze hit Britain in a BIG way.

This is one of those movies that plays like a cartoon. The plot doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, there’s a fair bit of slapstick and a lot of gunplay where nobody really gets hurt. But it works, more or less, because it’s good-natured fun. The two leads play comedy well and have good onscreen chemistry. There are some particularly funny scenes where the amateur blackmailers try to perfect their patter before calling the thugs. Like most of us, they've learned to speak thug from movies and television.

Screenwriter Kim Fuller has crafted a pretty good story. There are enough twists and turns to the plot to keep us interested, though there were a few moments that made me scratch my head. Characters sometimes know about things that it doesn't seem they'd know about or turn up at places where it doesn't seem they'd be. And at a certain point it just doesn't make sense that the women would continue with their plan rather than going back to the police. But no matter. The story is amusing, the cast is fun to watch and it was a diversion from the news. That's enough for me right now.

Gorilla Pants rating: 2.5 out of 4 bananas