User Reviews

That was a joke in the headline. Because Robert Lindsay, as Bert Rigby is a miner. Get it?

...Well if you didn't find that the height of hilarity, then buckle up, Sparky. It's better than almost other gag in the movie.

The real 'fool' in all this though, is me in wasting 90 minutes of my invaluable existence on this rubbish. I could've quite easily switched off the torture somewhere between Robert Lindsay doing his lamentable silent movie star impressions, or his truly terrible singing... and perhaps I mentioned his decidedly dodgy dancing? Well if I didn't, I just did. So there.

To say this film had a 'plot' would be so charitable you should claim tax-free relief from the government for even making that claim. Somehow, despite the inarguable evidence in display in the paragraph above, Bert Rigby decides to become a showbiz star and moves to America in order to raise enough money to save a mouldy old theatre in his Northern town... and that's as much as I can tell you.

Not because I do want to give away any spoilers, but the script rebounds from one increasingly desperate set-piece from the next with no rhyme or reason and definitely no wit or verve. Bert does his cringeworthy Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin routine. Bert becomes a pizza delivery boy and gets mugged. Bert gets a job as a butler and sets a twenty-four million million dollar painting on fire...

On and on the movie unfolds like a series of tedious off-the-shelf sitcom moments, throwing any old random cack it can at the screen, almost begging us to find a redeeming moment. Kind of sad, really. It even wheels out a tragically underused Robbie Coltrane only to dump him halfway through. When you can't even make any use of his considerable abilities, you know you're in trouble.

Carl Reiner wrote and directed this utter piffle, which just goes to show how far he'd fallen from his glory days with Mel Brooks. When you aren't scratching your head with confusion the absurdity with what's going on, you'll be bored out of your gourd... or physically in pain when we're introduced to a ditzy woman near the end (but not near enough) who gets FAR too much screentime for my liking. If you're forced to watch it, you'll know who I mean... she possesses the most god-awful attempt at a fake speech impediment I've ever heard in my life.

Presumably, Reiner told her to put this dreadful accent on because it was supposed to be funny. But like nearly everything else here, it isn't. By the time the big onstage song 'n' dance finale at long last arrived, my despairing mood couldn't have been more at odds with the rictus-grinning actors onscreen having a good old fashioned knees-up to 'Putting On The Ritz'.

A funeral would've been a far more fitting final venue for this dead-on-arrival feature, with the only audible sound being that of Father Mckenzie delivering the last rites to its maggot-strewn corpse.

From ashes to ashes, dust to dust... this movie sucks. Amen. 2/10.

"Are we in a time warp?" condom commercial director Bruno Kirby asks 20 minutes into this film where mine worker Robert Lindsay (best known for his Tony Award Winning role in the British musical "Me and My Girl") goes into a Chaplin impression during a modern day talent show. Kirby's question is apropos because I was thinking the same question. During that first 20 minutes, Lindsay danced in a coal miner's locker room to "The Continental", sung with a bloody nose to "Isn't It Romantic?" and taken on the entire score to "Singin' in the Rain". Lindsay, who scored fame performing "The Lambeth Walk" on the Tony Awards, is certainly more of a musical talent than Steve Martin was in the similarly nostalgic "Pennies From Heaven" (at least set during the time its music was a part of), but his vehicle for film stardom is a puzzlement, albeit a sometimes entertaining one.

While there's no doubting Lindsay's talent, he's about 25 years too late for musical film stardom. His dance number with Anne Bancroft (in a supporting role as a former MGM chorus girl who appeared in the movie version of "Silk Stockings") is filled with pratfalls that seem a bit too forced at times. Being made prior to the resurrection of the Broadway musical, this was doomed to failure, especially with such a weak narrative. It is all well intended but a good idea being pitched through a storyboard with a talented leading man promised doesn't mean success with poor execution. It reaches its nadir with a balletic version of Mama Cass's "Dream a Little Dream of Me" on a gazebo soundstage that resembles the film soundstage in the movie of "Xanadu" where Olivia Newton John and Michael Beck roller-skated to "Suddenly".