YMMV / Sex Lives of the Potato Men

• Audience-Alienating Premise: It's an Awful British Sex Comedy devoted to the sexual exploits of a group of potato delivery men. This would have been bad enough, but the main characters were made to look as grotesque as possible. A raunchy comedy about hideous people having sex? No thank you. It should come as little surprise that this film actually provoked public debate over whether the British film industry was in severe decline. It didn't help that £1 million of funding for the film came from the UK's National Lottery — needless to say, this was not the kind of "good cause" most normal people would expect lottery funding to be awarded to.
• Bile Fascination: To the point where the tagline on the DVD cover outright acknowledges the fact that the film has since vanished into obscurity after its release and that people today are only searching for copies of the movie to see if it really does live up to its reputation as the "lowest form of life on the planet".
• Critical Backlash: There are a certain number of viewers who feel this movie got way more hate than it deserved, and that the film is fairly funny in its own way while not trying to be anything groundbreaking.
• Critical Dissonance: As mentioned both above and below, the movie is hated by critics, but was more positively received by audiences who see the film as a guilty pleasure at best.
• Cult Classic: While the film was not critically well-received, that has not stopped it from earning a small fanbase.
• Designated Hero: It would probably be a massive stretch to describe any of the lead characters "heroes", though Ferris is supposed to be seen as the most mature and sensible of the eponymous potato men, despite the fact he openly talks about wanting to perform necrophilia on dead animals (yes, seriously...).
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Aside from the Audience-Alienating Premise, the one thing that the film is best known for is its usage of nearly £1 million of public money, comprising about a third of its budget, from the National Lottery via the UK Film Council, with many in the British press criticizing the Film Council for devoting taxpayers' money to a low-brow gross-out comedy instead of more worthy productions.
• The Scrappy: Tolly is the least liked character in the film, due to his disgusting and creepy fetishes and behavior, made worse by the fact it's implied at the end of the film that he had sex with Jeremy's dog.
• So Okay, It's Average: the general opinion of the film today is that it's an average comedy that is nothing special at best, will still garner some laughs, with its only flaw being that it tends to go too far with its jokes to the point of being more disturbing than funny.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The film suffers badly from this. The main characters are, at best, bland and unlikable, or worse, creepy and disgusting (one of them has a fetish for mixing vagina juice with jam sandwiches and is also an implied zoophile) and the whole story revolves around them having sex with incredibly ugly women, sitting in the pub drinking beer, and just doing nothing remotely interesting, resulting in the film being very boring, if not depressing, to watch. The humor is also just as off-putting since the jokes are either boring and lazily written or gross and nauseating.
• Vindicated by History: The movie was universally panned by critics. And although this movie doesn't play this trope 100% straight, audiences were far more forgiving of the film, and it has received a cult following over the years since its release.

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