|
|
Rating:  - Jolly good show, old chap
Given the mixed reviews I read on the Amazon website about this one, I wasn't sure if it would be any good. Fortunately, though, I was pleasantly, nay, SIDE-SPLITTINGLY surprised! It was brilliant!
Don't be fooled into thinking this is just a parody of Merchant Ivory movies. It also pays extensive homage to Ken Russell's brilliant 'Lady Chatterley' as well, not to mention having a bit of a dig at Jane Eyre/Sense and Sensibility/et al.
You don't have to be a huge Merchant Ivory fan to like this, although it probably helps. Even though the last time I saw a Merchant Ivory movie was many years ago, I still got all the jokes in this. And even my boyfriend, who has never watched anything in the Merchant Ivory genre and probably never will, was falling about laughing. Some jokes are subtle, some are over the top and bawdy, but all are hilarious.
Prunella Scales and Peter Ustinov, two veteran actors at the top of their game, are absolutely wonderful in this, as are the rest of the cast.
Thoroughly recommended!
Rating:  - Funny but dirty
There are some undeniably funny moments in this spoof of Merchant Ivory's lush literary films such as "A Room with a View" and "A Passage to India." Indeed, it was a genre that was ripe for a good parody. Peter Ustinov is especially funny as an English imperialist in India, who needs to sit on hunks of British lawn while he has tea. However, I found this movie to be so crammed with sex jokes that it bordered on the peurile. Certainly the sexual repression of the proper English movies was a good target for comedy, but I think this film goes a little overboard with its endless sex jokes until one wonders whether the writers have more than one string to their violin.
Rating:  - How well do you know your British movies?
Granted this isn't a high brow humor movie, but it isn't supposed to be. It is hysterical if you take it for what it is- a movie about sex that made fun of all the aspects of Merchant Ivory films and Masterpiece Theatre that needed to be laughed at. Some of the parodies were really very clever, my favorite being the Mouret Fanfare played on the sitar, while others were on the overdone side. On the whole though this movie is great if you're well versed in quite a bit of British film.
Rating: - Enchanting
For those who get it, delightful.
For those who don't....well, I'm sorry, but it's just not the movie's fault.
Rating:  - Where comedy fears to tread
If ever there was a genre ripe for parody, it is the Merchant Ivory school of film-making. If ever there was a film that failed so miserably to parody the genre, it is "Stiff Upper Lips", which makes "Scary Movie" seems like "Annie Hall".
How very talented actors like Prunella Scales, Frank Finlay and Peter Ustinov (who deserves to be sent to Siberia for his performance) allow themselves to be part of this disaster is beyond comprehension. This movie has no redeeeming features whatsoever.
|
|