|
MguyXXV 
"X marks the spot"
|
 Posted - 06/18/2019 : 08:34:15
|
There was a lot that was stupid about the film industry in the sixties and seventies, and this review is utterly pointless: who cares about a nothing film that no one even remembers. Twenty-first century filmmaking is not perfect, and I don't mean to suggest that there weren't any good films (clearly) in the sixties and seventies. But the lack of choices is evident. And what I mean by lack of choices is, for example, I know that actors have to eat, and that I can watch a piece of shit movie starring Bruce Willis on Amazon Prime (yes, I mean Once Upon A Time in Venice (2017)). But in the sixties and seventies, you actually had to go to a theater to see shitty film. Some of it was so shitty that you couldn't even get to see it on TV. Does anyone remember Brian De Palma's Hi, Mom! (1970)? Did you ever see it on TV? I guess I can forgive De Palma, though; it was experimental (at least that's what I tell myself).
I like Terry Southern's written stuff. It's in the same vein as Roald Dahl's adult stuff (anyone remember "My Uncle Oswald," or the short stories in the collection "Switch Bitch"? Brilliant stuff.). Fun fact: did you know that Southern also wrote comedy for Saturday Night Live in the early eighties? Transforming Southern to film was apparently not something that sixties/seventies directors could do easily. Unless we're talking about Kubrick. But the sixties and seventies suffered from the idea of instant success: put in a notable name and it'll sell, right?
This film sucks. Peter Sellers, whom we now know suffered from a significant personality disorder that made him an ingenious performer, gives a studied but utterly wasted performance. Ringo Starr is in it, and probably for no other reason than he was with the Beatles. And he sucks. Paul McCartney sings the title song "Come and Get It."). Racquel Welch appears as the mistress of the whip. A very young John Cleese displays some remarkably understated acting chops for all of the 23 seconds he appears. And aside from the final scene, where a number of British gents jump into a vat of shit to recover money -- and even that scene misses the mark -- the film utterly misses everything Southern about the story. I wonder whether people in 1969 liked this. I didn't. |
|
The Magic Christian (1969)
