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Overrated

Absolutely the worst movie.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

A very dark and farcical comedy recounts a lunatic's rising in the British ruling class, it is an adaptation of Peter Barnes' stage play. Jack Gurney (O'Toole) is a paranoid schizophrenic man lived in asylum for 8 years, who thinks he is Jesus Christ, the funny thing is that he is also the sole heir of his accidentally self-asphyxiated father, the 13th Earl of Gurney, and to inherit the peerage, his return to his family villa does hinder his vile uncle Sir Charles' (Mervyn) plan to take possession of the family estates. Jack, who advocates to bring love and charity to the world, affectionately claims "believe in me in loving goodness" while anything unsavory is "put into his galvanized pressure cooker and disappears", but in they eyes of Dr. Herder (Bryant), Jack's psychiatrist, he is a nut-case with a delusion of grandeur. While he deploys all the experimental methods to cure him, Sir Charles has his own plan to get the possession of the property, he marries off his mistress Grace (Seymour), who actually was going to marry Jack's father, to Jack and hopes they produce an heir, then he can fittingly put his nephew into an institution, so he can acquire the power. Wantonly, things don't go that way, though Jack successfully marries Grace, the ceremony is presided by bishop Lampton (Sim), whose predicament to officiate Jesus' matrimony is side-splitting to watch, and Grace delivers a son shortly. But Dr. Herder's persistence, partly incensed by Charles' wife Lady Claire (Browne), who sides with Jack to get redress for Charles' infidelity, finally works, a face-to-face encounter with another mad man McKyle (Green) who also believes himself to be Christ in a thunderous night miraculously cures Jack (with a little help from an imaginative gorilla in tuxedo), or not? Anyway, everyone is convinced Jack is back to normal, only his sporadic stuttering which Jack exerts himself to hide suggests otherwise.The film runs about 154 minutes, an unusual length for a play-turned-film, in the third act, Jack fancies himself as the notorious Jack the Ripper, therefore the film tones down its lighthearted and musical leitmotif and starkly mutates into a murderous drama, until the stirring end of a zombie parliament and Grace's shrilling scream. The tonal shift is deviant (particularly when characters precipitately start singing and dancing without any cinematic cues) but it does thrust a sharp-edged dagger into the putrid aristocracy rank and the top tier decision-makers, but Barnes' pungent script doesn't leave anyone else unscathed, the loyal but verbally transgressed butler Tucker (Lowe) is passed off as a whipping boy for the murder; the gold-digger Grace cannot win her husband's heart no matter how tantalizing her striptease is; more jarringly, Dr. Herder, a foreigner deeply believes in his scientific methodology, fails to grasp the situation and is driven mad by the appalling fact. There is dark humor galore, but so is the unbridled disdain towards the mundane sanity. This is one of Peter O'Toole's 8 Oscar-nominated performances, and it is not just a worthy one, in my book, he should win, it is the kind of physically taxing and mentally exhausting prototype which can daunt any Shakespearian thespian, but Mr. O'Toole is wholeheartedly invested in the before-and-after changeover, ranges from extremes like explosively maniac to perturbingly merciless, not counting his solemn imitation of Christ, constantly puts audience in a weird position doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. This ensemble piece is consummated with a handful impressive supporting performances from Lowe, Sim, Browne, Seymour and Bryant, each adds their own flair to this ludicrous and outlandish tall tale. As for the still-working director Peter Medak, browsing through his later career, his third feature might be his best,The most indelible line, also featured on the movie's poster, is when asked how he had decided that he was God, Jack nonchalantly replies, "I found that whenever I prayed to God, I was talking to myself." And Dr. Herder should have realized that no sanity can be induced from that axiomatic logic.

What a sorry mess! "The Ruling Class" begins as full of promise and with wit and an irreverent willingness to defy convention and slowly (glacially!) mutates over its 2-1/2 hour running time into a directionless screed against Britain's aristocracy. Never willing to let the audience grasp their intentions on their own, again and again Peter Medak uses hamfisted characterizations and plot devices to convey author Peter Barnes' view that the titled in Britain are superficial, hypocritical, incestuous, calloused, categorically corrupt and evil, congenitally insane, the personification of Satan, and Jack the Ripper himself! And the members of the House of Lords? Why they're a bunch of stuffy old corpses. No, really! NO, REALLY! Every time you say to yourself "Yeah, I get it", the Two Peters reply "Oh, no you don't; not by a long shot!" and then proceed to tell you the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. Peter O'Toole is pretty good (although led down by comically bad make-up and wigs), but O'Toole is much better elsewhere. Unless you're an O'Toole completist, save yourself 2-1/2 hours of having tabloid-level editorializing rubbed in your face.

Firstly I would like to say that i adore the way almost every aspect of this film. It is extremely witty (witness the oft quoted line from O'Toole about why he thinks he is God) and also very touching (Jack's joy when he marries his wife for example) and it's songs are great and very nicely integrated. The one area where I think it fails is as a satire against the ruling classes. The idea that the aristocracy is uncomfortable with non comformity or uncontrolled emotion is neither original nor reserved solely for that strata of society. This does not mean that the film lacks depth however and I found myself extremely troubled by the film's observation that the world is more tolerant of excessive coldness than excessive love. At times I feel that the film could work as a parable to the release of Barrabas and the crucifixtion of Christ. Perhaps this is to read too much into it but I urge everyone to watch the film and ponder it for themselves.

They almost never show this on TV. Sad. It is a remarkable film and Peter O'Toole is simply brilliant as Jack.The fight scene between the two "gods" is wonderful. Almost makes me wish they made a sequel about the life of the electromagnetic god who has to recharge via an open light socket. Great fun and then downright chilling at the end. The butler is one of the better characters, as is old Alastair Sim as the Bishop. "Why was he wearing a ballet skirt?" Poor old dear. As good as Brando was in The Godfather, I still think O'Toole should have trumped him for Best Actor that year. I mean, Brando played a great character, but O'Toole ACTED in this, acted up, down, right, left, and sideways. He is not the same character at the end ... oh, no.