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Pretty Good

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

How ironic. Who could have possibly guessed it. Who could have known that 25 years later, Terry Jones (the director) would himself become a dirty old man, but a much more wicked dirty old man than the rather harmless perverts featured here. Here's a man who left his wife of 40+ years, to run off with some cheap 20something gold-digging tart old enough to be his granddaughter. Now Grandpa Jones and his Swedish sex-kitten/fantasy-granddaughter are pushing their littler toddler through the streets of London. (Google it and cringe.) Aging gracefully, or at least with a smidgen of dignity, evidently wasn't in the stars for the only Welsh Python. Then again, he always was a filthy old Marxist, not giving a toss about the family unit – and that includes his own. PS celebrates not so much sexual freedom as it romanticizes/celebrates perversion, and we know that left-wingers will always celebrate it, until they're blue in the face, under the guise of "diversity" (their favourite word these days). His wife should have taken this movie seriously, as a sign of her husband's questionable sense of morality.PS isn't a laugh-out-loud comedy. In fact, it isn't even a laugh-out-a-little comedy. It is chuckle-worthy in several places, but that's about it. What it is though is fairly interesting. Hardly attention-grabbing, mind you, perhaps due to the subject matter which makes this movie quite outdated; the forced tackiness may have shocked some people back in 1987, but it's peanuts now. Jones could not have predicted how decadent the world would become, just decades after this movie was made, which must please his cold Marxist heart or else he would have either made this movie more extreme or binned the project entirely. After all, posterity is what he was after, not just the quick buck; how could anyone possibly think that a Marxist could care about financial again? I think they share everything with everyone anyway – much the way Jones will share his estate with his new Nordic sex-toy. She provides the personal services, he provides the cash and jet-set lifestyle.Filming a comedy about prostitutes is certainly neither a difficult nor a commercially risky road to travel. The gags write themselves; what's there NOT to laugh about? And yet, this sleazy comedy fails just in that, in spite of the obvious talents and charisma of Julie Walters. They couldn't have picked a better actress for the part, the problem being that she plays it too broadly, no doubt pushed to this kind of performance by Jones. Unfortunately, her character doesn't make much sense; she is a walking contradiction. Jones and the writer of PS couldn't decide whether they wanted to portray her as bright or downright moronic: there is evidence for both. Her intelligence varies depending on the comedic necessities of the situation/scene at hand, i.e. they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. Her behaviour is puzzling; she sometimes behaves as if she's totally new to the business, and yet we are made to understand that she's been whoring around for many years at the point of her introduction.The plot-twist involving Julie's maid, Dolly, did not work. It was obvious from the first moment that guy stepped onto the screen that Dolly was a he. Anyone who watched this movie and found themselves in surprise and shock when it was revealed that Dolly is a man needs to have their vision and perhaps even sexual orientation re-examined. It was akin to putting a wig and make-up on Danny de Vito and expecting that "transformation" to fool the viewer.At best, PS is a semi-failure as a comedy - but not without merit as a time-filler, and certainly nicely filmed. There is little to nothing to learn from Jones's "moral" messages, and there is far too little to laugh at. This subject matter had been covered with far more competence and depth in "Working Girls", a comedy/drama indie film released just a year prior to this one. The notion that behind many chartered accountants, wigged uptight judges, and other upper-class professionals of social repute sexual perverts and ungratified deviates reside is one that Monty Python had already explored several decades earlier, and with much more success. Still, it's so much better than "Eric the Viking". That one truly sunk Jones's flailing career as movie director.

beautifully acted, unexpectedly moving, hilarious, and at times very, very dirty, this film is "inspired by" the life of cynthia payne, one of the most notorious madame's in britain's history - julie walters is brilliant as a woman who evolves from a waitress struggling to make her rent, to a successful businesswoman running a brothel that caters only to "kinky sorts" - through all of it, she raises a son, forces her father to come to terms with the person his daughter has become, and has difficulty with the "charles and diana" ideal of love that she can never find for herself - perhaps the greatest quality of this film, though, is its ability to shock at every turn - just when you thought you'd seen just how honestly funny kinky sex can be, think again...

Personal Services is an exceptional film that has been underrated, ignored and obscured by the avalanche of goon comedies which crowd the late 80's and 90's. Its portrait of a kindly brothel keeper do-gooder (which might be described as the kinky, middle aged s&m version of Austen's Emma) is so packed with outrageous imagery, one could forget to admire its level headed attitude toward sex. The glee it takes at exposing the absolute silliness of adults on the subject, as well as its constant stabs at the hypocrisy of the British middle class makes it stand out. Neither of those subjects are particularly unknown to British comedy, of course, but Personal Services never lets up, and skewers so many shoddy English values at the rate of swatting flies.The film is a strong departure of style for Terry Jones, its director, whose former The Meaning of Life would lead us to imagine another style altogether. Certainly he is drawn to the material for its surrealistic and madcap flavor, but he surprisingly brings qualities of realism, detail and nitty-grit to the episodes that help keep the film grounded in a believable social milieu.The script, by David Leland (Mona Lisa) is a fictional account that follows the rise of Cynthia Payne, the English madame who became the darling of the English press after several arrests in the middle 80's. Leland also wrote and directed a film released the same year (Wish You Were Here) which captures Payne in her teen-age years, but Personal Services is much tighter, rapid-fire and more ambitious.The film veers between outrageous comic episodes and very real emotional moments that reflect the social realist scenes of earlier English films like A Taste of Honey and Room at the Top. The struggle of a woman deciding whether to take the plunge and become a prostitute; the scene where the heroine confronts her distant dad at her sister's wedding; the scenes that reflect the loneliness and isolation the heroine feels may not seem appropriate in a pull-out-all-the-stops laugh fest, but they help to deepen the themes of the film, and give it both depth and breath. One of the more melancholy themes that stays dominant in the film is the deep emotional price one must pay for being a non-conformist.The vivid imagery Jones brought to the Monty Python films serves an equally symbolic purpose here. The image of a prostitute with angel's wings flapping pitifully about a moonlit garden as she tries to escape the policeman who tackles her is an image which welds perfectly the film's sacred and profane themes and is unforgettable. And there are so many daring, in your face scenes ––the discipline scenes in the brothel; the exposure of Dotty in the john; the marvelous gift the madame gives both her father and son–– and they keep the film more surprising and fresh than most sex comedies of the 90's.Julie Waters gives one of her wittiest, shaded, and full performances but she is only one–– the many character actors in the film are perfect in tone and work together in extraordinary ways. The film serves as a reality check about one's own up-tight attitudes about sex. (Your own squirming should be a revelation! ) American viewers need to be very much on their toes, however, because some of the funniest dialogue is rapid (with authentic accents) and often thrown away. Also helpful is to realize the slang expression `willie' does NOT refer to a dolphin, but to a guy's you know what.I am always running into people who discovered this film on their own, and hold it high on their list of the greatest comedies. I urge you to discover it for yourself!

Very funny movie, one of my favorites. The entire cast was great but Julia Walters was excellent, as always. "Popazokaloo" should have become a household word, apparently not enough people saw the movie. The scene in the loo will make you laugh till you cry. I find it interesting that the men I know that have seen the movie don't find it as amusing as the women who have viewed it do. (Watch it and draw your own conclusions about my observation.)