Quick Take
- Narration: Ayoade’s delivery is the entire point, his deliberately portentous, self-important tone applied to a notoriously mediocre 2003 film is the joke; without him reading it, the book would not function.
- Themes: Auteur theory as absurdist comedy, capitalism in cinema, the gap between sincerity and ironic performance
- Mood: Dryly cerebral, willfully obscure, committed to its own bit without blinking
- Verdict: A work of sustained deadpan performance that rewards listeners who enjoy comedy operating at the level of literary parody rather than accessible humor.
I finished this one on a Sunday evening after watching View from the Top on a streaming service, which is exactly the wrong order to approach it. The film, as Ayoade would argue at length and with great seriousness, is a masterpiece. The film, as most sentient humans would observe, stars Gwyneth Paltrow as an aspiring flight attendant and was not particularly well received by critics in 2003. The entire premise of Ayoade on Top is that these two assessments are not contradictory, and that only one of them is correct.
What Richard Ayoade has produced here is one of the stranger audiobook objects currently available: a completely serious critical analysis of a film most people have forgotten existed, written in the register of high academic film theory, delivered by its author with the full weight of someone who believes every word he is saying. The joke, if it is a joke, is structural. The reviews calling it a work of performance art in book form are not wrong. One listener notes that they believe Ayoade is serious about 99% of what is in the book, which is also possibly not wrong, which is where it gets interesting.
The Critical Argument Ayoade Actually Advances
Ayoade’s stated project is the canonization of View from the Top as a brutal masterpiece that celebrates capitalism in what he calls its victimless glory. The synopsis offers the detail that this is a film we might imagine Donald Trump half-watching on a gold-plated flat screen while scanning the cabin for fresh, young prey. This line appears in the book’s own description of its argument, which means Ayoade wrote that sentence about his own critical project and left it there. That level of self-aware absurdism running at full speed through 4 hours and 39 minutes is either deeply satisfying or exhausting depending on your tolerance for comedy that refuses to wink.
His journey takes us, per the synopsis, from Peckham to Paris by way of Nevada and other places we don’t care about. This is not geography so much as methodology: the book proceeds via digression, confident non-sequitur, and the kind of critical close reading that treats a scene of flight attendant training with the same gravity typically reserved for a shot in Tarkovsky. The technique has a lineage. Film critics who have spent time with certain strands of Continental theory will recognize the mode and understand what is being gently eviscerated.
What the Commentary Does With Sincerity
One reviewer identifies Ayoade as a modern poet stretching his legs into subversive prose and notes that anyone with interest in how the modern auteur is evolving should acquire it immediately. That framing is itself in the spirit of the book: treating something peripheral and slightly absurd with the vocabulary of serious cultural analysis. The book exists in that register permanently. It does not step outside it to confirm or deny its own sincerity.
The audiobook version is, by common consensus, the correct version of this text. The author’s voice carries the particular quality of someone who has given many interviews while visibly not enjoying them and has found a way to redirect that energy into sustained literary performance. Every pause is intentional. Every modulation of seriousness is calibrated. A listener who described it as reading like great episodes of Toast of London may be detecting something real about the persona overlap, though the registers are distinct.
Where the Sustained Bit Strains
I want to be honest about where this works less well. At nearly five hours, the joke requires the listener to remain inside its logic for an extended period without the conventional satisfactions of plot, revelation, or emotional development. Listeners who come for conventional humor, setup, punchline, escalation, will find the experience unrewarding. The comedy operates entirely at the level of register and premise. If you are not already finding the conceit funny by the end of the first thirty minutes, the remaining four hours will not convert you.
It also helps considerably to have at least a passing familiarity with View from the Top. Not because knowledge of the film is required for comprehension, but because the gap between how Ayoade discusses it and what it actually is becomes funnier the more precisely you can perceive that gap. The film is not obscure enough to require homework, but it is obscure enough that some listeners may find themselves slightly adrift without it.
Who Should Listen and Who Should Skip
Listen if you enjoy sustained deadpan, appreciate comedy that operates at the level of literary form, and are comfortable spending several hours inside a joke that never explains itself. Fans of Ayoade’s screen work in The IT Crowd and Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace will find this entirely consistent with those sensibilities. Film studies graduates may find it both funny and genuinely useful as a parody of academic methodology.
Skip if you need your humor to be warm, accessible, or reciprocal. This is cold comedy, confident that you will come to it. It does not come to you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to have seen View from the Top to get anything out of this?
You can follow the book without having seen it, but the comedy sharpens considerably if you have at least a basic sense of what the film actually is. It is available on streaming services and is not a long watch. Thirty minutes of the film before listening would enhance the experience.
Is Ayoade being genuinely sincere about his admiration for the film, or is the entire thing ironic?
This is intentionally unanswerable, and that ambiguity is the book’s central mechanism. Multiple reviewers have reached different conclusions. The audiobook does not resolve the question, which is arguably the point.
How does this compare to Ayoade’s earlier book Ayoade on Ayoade?
Both operate in a similar register of elaborate self-parody and deadpan critical voice, but Ayoade on Top has a more sustained argument threading through it. Listeners who enjoyed the earlier book will find the same sensibility here, applied with slightly more focus.
The runtime is listed as 4 hours and 39 minutes, is it paced well or does it drag?
It depends entirely on your engagement with the premise. Listeners fully inside the joke report that it sustains well. Listeners less committed to the bit may find the middle sections slower. This is not a book that accelerates toward a climax; it maintains a single temperature throughout.
