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Withnail & I
Two out-of-work actors -- the anxious, luckless Marwood and his acerbic, alcoholic friend, Withnail -- spend their days drifting between their squalid flat, the unemployment office and the pub. When they take a holiday "by mistake" at the country house of Withnail's flamboyantly gay uncle, Monty, they encounter the unpleasant side of the English countryside: tedium, terrifying locals and torrential rain.
| Release : | 1987 |
| Rating : | 7.5 |
| Studio : | Cineplex-Odeon Films, Handmade Films, |
| Crew : | Art Direction, Production Design, |
| Cast : | Richard E. Grant Paul McGann Richard Griffiths Ralph Brown Michael Elphick |
| Genre : | Drama Comedy |
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Reviews
Why so much hype?
Strong and Moving!
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
A time fable made up of details. In the simple repetition of the ridiculous mediocrity of life, the changes in the world have come to the fore, and nobody could hide. The cruel performance of time lapse is firm and effective. All indulgence is eventually thrown away by life in a punished way, either bidding farewell to the past or continuing to overdraw youth in the unknown. Thus, the precise time node reminds the protagonist to make an urgent decision on life. Reason seems to be a breeze, and human beings can make practice extremely difficult between detachment and corruption. In the end, this kind of entanglement caused the protagonist's predicament, but it made the film very exciting.
You can admire the acting (especially of Griffiths and Grant; I tended to find McGann more irritating than amusing or enlightening), but that is about it for me, I am afraid and this otherwise had very little to appeal to an oldie like me. I have not got the faintest idea where the "scores of quotable quotes" others have referred to are to be found in the film ("I have had a fee ales" - not really Oscar Wilde, is it?) while I found the 'plot' (thinner than the side of a paper bag used to transport a cup of soup) lacking in any real interest or amusement, let alone insight. As regards the latter, I can only imagine this film would appal to early-/mid-twenty somethings who are in the process of saying good-bye to student life and are beginning to look back on this phase of their lives with nostalgia before having to think about such horrors of post-univ life as getting up at a set time, wearing a suit or trying to get a mortgage. If they enjoy it and find it "a modern British classic", good for them as I doubt, by the same token, they would find much in a film which meant quite a lot to me at their age such as "Electrical Glide in Blue". ("The moving finger writes.....")
Two actors who can't find an acting job find themselves living in squaller. One is a drunk (Withnail), presumably drinking to ease the pain, and the other (I) is seemingly an under-confident, paranoid man. They go on holiday to the country (courtesy of Withnail's rich uncle Monty) to take a break from this horrible way of living. When they return to London, "I" has received an acting part, and must move away and leave his friend Withnail in order to take it.This film is set in 1969, 18 years before it's release, and as a consequence, eagle eyed viewers can expect the usual "that wasn't around at the time" thing which will annoy them, but won't matter to anyone else.It doesn't have a particularly high budget, as you could probably tell by watching it, but it doesn't really need one. Just as Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Life of Brian weren't lavished with money, they too are masterpieces of cinema and comedy. These films are prime examples that films that have a £2,000,000 budget can often be more entertaining than those that cost £200,000,000 to make.This film was a very funny comedy film, probably one of my favourite comedies, with a great cast who many people will probably recognise from their work after this film, very relate-able characters, but just as importantly, a great script. I feel that the ending may make you wonder what happened to the protagonists after going their separate ways, but I personally feel that it ended in a way that makes a sequel very unnecessary. Overall, you won't regret seeing this film.
Withnail & I is a fairly funny film with a bit of a dark setting,it's a well received comedy but its not really my kind of humor and I didn't really get a lot of the jokes in it.I watched it because I'm trying to watch a show I saw called The 50 Greatest Comedy Films,I'm trying to watch all the films on the list and Withnial & I made it in at 21.Two drug abusers,Withnail and Marwood (I),Withnail being educated and upper crust and Marwood having more of a visual outlook on life,escape from there unemployed,stay at Withnails uncle Montys cottage.Monty is a middle aged homosexual who begins to fall for Marwood.
