Reviews

This medieval satirical fantasy shows Terry Gilliam's inventive imagination at its peak - although it seems to have more appeal to the British sense of humour than to others. A fairly thin, standard story adapted from Lewis Carrol's 'The Jabberwock', is fleshed out by some wonderfully-staged humour and excellent performances by perfectly-cast veterans of stage and screen. Medieval nerd Dennis Cooper is besotted with love for the gross Griselda Fishfinger, but, disowned by his father on his deathbed, has to travel to the City to seek his fortune, armed only with the clothes he stands up in and a potato 'love'-token from Greasy. The city is besieged by the eponymous monster and King Bruno decides to hold a tourney to find the best knight to see the Jabberwock off. Of course, Dennis gets carried along and saves the day.

The sets are just amazing, and the costumes, props and cast turn this into a delight for the senses. Most of the humour is very predictable - but done in such a way as to heighten the enjoyment at the protracted punch-line; eg the armourer, laboriously rivetting, is distracted by the well-meaning Dennis, setting off a chain reaction that just has one rolling with laughter. There are just so many of these staged interludes, it's amazing how they fit into such a relatively short film, but there are also some wonderful one-liners hidden in there; 'his teeth turned WHITE overnight...!' comments one carious yokel to his equally plaque-toothed colleague.

Terry Gilliam's direction is at its peak here - even outshining the Monty Python films (and they are GOOD!) - but the casting is better than anything else I've seen; Max Wall is the epitome of the senile, decrepit old king who has occasional flashes of sanity; John LeMesurier as his long-suffering doleful chamberlain; Warren Mitchell as the slimy, money-grubbing Fishfinger; Harry H Corbett as the raunchy devil-may-care squire; and of course Michael Palin, who just IS Dennis.

I never tire of watching this film, I'm just glad that it is now finally available on DVD (but only in USA, so far :-(( )

Definitely the funniest film I've seen in years, right from the first minute the whole audience was rolled-up with uncontrolled laughter.

The closest thing I can compare it to is Roadrunner and Wily Coyote, obviously with much better graphics. I liked the way the animators did not go for total realism, animated films (I hate to say 'cartoons') of this nature need to be slightly divorced from reality for the zany humour to have the right effect. The rendering of the characters' motion is particularly well done, IMHO much better than, say, 'Final Fantasy' - and the voices were much better chosen than other movies of this genre ... I would far rather have a distinctive voice for each character, than a well-known actor chosen just because he/she is well-known (to increase hype/attendance??).

What I also liked is the cross-generation appeal of this film, there were people there aged from 3 to geriatry and EVERYONE enjoyed it - helped (I think) by the largely visual humour, the lack of snappy, fast-talking characters of the Robin Williams mold and the absence of 'in-jokes'.

More like this, please.

As the film started I was blown away by the visual effects, this is REALLY good stuff, but then the characters started walking and all that good work was shot to hell - stiff?, reminded me of marionettes (however it did get better as the movie progressed). I found myself concentrating on the animation rather than the plot, with the result that I lost the thread and was overcome by boredom in the last half-hour.

What I really find appalling is that film companies can pour so much talent and money into such a lame plot! You could pick almost any one of the thousands of Fantasy/Sci-fi books in print and have a far better script than this rubbish. Producers should realise by now that you can't just hype-up a movie and force the public to like it - many of the best films of recent years were made on a shoe-string, but with the best plots in the business (excluding Blair Witch).

I fail to understand where all these 8, 9 & 10 votes come from... the film is more concerned with cinematography than telling a story.

OK it was beautifully done, but there was nothing in the story that couldn't have been told in half the time - and then used the other half to fill us in on the background and the results (did he pay for it?, did she go back to him?).

As it stands, the most memorable thing about the film is the introductory sequence featuring that wonderful music, from-the-bones singing and later on the wonderful facial contortions from John C. Ojwang.

5/10

In the same vein as 'Lock, stock..' and 'Snatch' the film captures the mood of the 60s perfectly, giving a step-by-step sequence of how our wide-boy gangster anti-hero rises to the top, over a mound of bodies. Paul Bettany captures the essence of a bitter, twisted, misogynistic homicidal maniac - he even looks like a young Malcolm McDowell (see "If"). David Thewlis has improved tremendously from his earlier performances (see "DragonHeart") and carries off the gentleman hard-man almost to perfection, the only stumble is at the end of the film, which may be down to direction rather than lack of acting ability. Non-Brits may struggle with the language (what IS a fa'in' can' ?), but the gist comes through very strongly and the dialogue is brilliant.

Scenes that stand out in particular are; the 'interrogation' scene - totally suspenseful and believable; and the 'undressed for action' scene, although that is just a tad (!) gorier. Thoroughly recommended, but not for weak stomachs...

After all the pazazz about this film, I was expecting something a bit more disturbing / gripping / searching - what we actually got was a slow, not very witty, rather shallow, boring film about modern day life - hell, this could have been me 10 years ago! I blame the critics and the advertisers - this is in the same league as Titanic, overblown hype over a very ordinary film.

Poor Bruce - having to work with a worse plot than Deep Impact must hurt, and his jaws must be aching from trying not to laugh at the blatant technical inaccuracies. OK, it was a flat-out action film, but they could have made it just a little bit believable! I was cringeing all the way through it; eg, they can't get normal voice comms to work while the space-station is disintegrating, but they can map the progress of astronauts' embedded chips OK? Drilling a 2-foot diameter hole at 1 foot per second?- of course, a butter asteroid (with no debris)! Sorry, this film stretched the bounds of my credulity waaaay too far for me to enjoy it.

I read other reviews prior to seeing this movie and took the advice of the rental guy; "Very funny" he said. It may be that my English sense of humour does not sit well with this type of "comedy", but I found NOTHING to class as humour in this film. The language was disgusting, and five minutes spent milking a 'joke' about BJs and fidelity is not my idea of good writing or directorship. I persevered, hoping that some glimmer of light would shine through, but I was sadly disappointed - my wife walked out (she's got more sense than me). My advice - forget it. If I could give a zero, I would.

One of my favourite movies - on a par with "It's a Wonderful Life", but PLEASE see it in black and white! Spencer Tracy's best role (I think) - he hits the spot with his soft-at-heart Portogussie fisherman and, contrary to other crits, I think Freddy Bartholomew plays the spoilt little brat just right for the era. The interplay between these two diametrically opposed 'friends' unfolds slowly, Tracy's firm hand and willingness to forgive childhood pranks serve to cement a solid relationship that Bartholomew never had with his father. Father's acceptance of this relationship and realisation that he had almost ruined his child is a lesson for us all. I defy anyone who has children to sit through this with a dry eye.