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The Magic Christian
Sir Guy Grand, the richest man in the world, adopts a homeless man, Youngman. Together, they set out to prove that anyone--and anything--can be bought.
Release : | 1970 |
Rating : | 5.8 |
Studio : | Commonwealth United Entertainment, Grand Films Limited, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Production Design, |
Cast : | Peter Sellers Ringo Starr Isabel Jeans Caroline Blakiston Wilfrid Hyde-White |
Genre : | Comedy |
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Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1964
Rating: 8.3
Reviews
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
Hands down without an other flick coming in 2nd place. I will strive to have either disks or downloads freely available (whatever is the predominant format at such time} for any attendee who is twisted enough to want to see what it was that inspired and sustained me.
A really pleasant surprise this. I can't even remember if I saw it theatrically, I certainly hadn't seen it since although I remember the earlier Candy very well. Peter sellers is understated and brilliant throughout and he seems very protective of Ringo who does well, certainly better than I remember he was in Candy. Loads of great turns here and the director holds the film together well. It is episodic with some scenes better than others but it keeps moving and there is always going to be something of interest the next minute anyway. Two standout scenes for me, an hilarious scene with Sellers and Starr with Spike Milligan as a traffic warden and the sensational Mad About The Boy rendition aboard ship. The song is sung for Roman Polanski, who thinks his luck is in but the 'lady' singing is Yul Brynner in drag, although, to top it all, is really the voice of Peter Sellers. There is also a cracking scene with Raquel Welch with whip and bevy of half naked galley slaves, Laurence Harvey as a stripping Hamlet (at Stratford East theatre) and Christopher Lee doing what he does best. On top of all this there is much location shooting and we get excellent river views of London, street scenes of Putney, the National Theatre on the South Bank seeming near completion and much, much more - wonderful.
There was once a television show called 'Wudja? Cudja?' in which presenters paid members of the public to do outrageous things, such as stripping naked on beaches where no nudity was allowed. Whether by accident or design it echoed the main theme of this 1969 film, based on Terry Southern's novel. Peter Sellers plays 'Sir Guy Grand', an eccentric billionaire ( with more than a passing resemblance to ex-P.M. Harold Macmillan ) who adopts a homeless young man ( Ringo Starr ) and renames him 'Youngman Grand'. Sir Guy then gives his new son a master class in human greed, proving that each man and woman has their price. On a train, for example, he tries to buy a hot-dog from a platform vendor ( Victor Maddern ), but has no change. Not wanting to lose the sale, the vendor runs after the departing train, eventually falling off the platform. A grouse shooting session turns weird when tanks are brought into it. Crufts is disrupted by an African dog which eats the other entrants. At a posh restaurant, Grand puts on a seat-belt, and shocks patrons by smearing caviar all over his face. Grand has the great Laurence Harvey do a striptease whilst reciting the famous 'To Be Or Not To Be' soliloquy from 'Hamlet'. My favourite scene, though, is when Spike Milligan's over-efficient traffic warden is paid £500 to eat the ticket he has just planted on Grand's rolls.There is no plot as such, just Grand playing one daft prank after another. John Cleese and Graham Chapman were brought in after the script had been through ten drafts, but their work was ultimately rejected. Bits and pieces made it into the finished movie though ( others wound up in 'Monty Python' ), and both men appeared on screen. Cleese said later the movie finished up as a series of celebrity walk-on's ( Michael Aspel and Alan Whicker pop up as themselves ), and blamed director, Joseph McGrath, for not understanding comedy structure. McGrath had worked on the 1967 'Casino Royale' spoof, and it shows. Like that earlier picture, much of 'Magic Christian' is shapeless and undisciplined. The title refers to the luxury ocean liner that sets off from London for New York. Some nice digs at '60's celebrity culture here ( John Lennon and Yoko Ono are seen boarding, along with Aristotle and Jackie Onassis ). The voyage goes horribly wrong; a vampire ( Christopher Lee ) is stalking females, graffiti appears on the walls, and the Captain ( Wilfrid Hyde-White ) is attacked by would-be hijackers. Raquel Welch plays a whip-cracking priestess in charge of topless female galley slaves. As pandemonium erupts, the passengers escape, only to discover that they never left London. Sir Guy has pulled off his biggest prank ever!It is a wildly uneven picture, sometimes funny, but not the great anti-capitalistic satire it thinks it is ( its more like a ruder version of Michael Bentine's 'The Sandwich Man' ). Paul Merton liked it enough to include in his 'Big Night In' on B.B.C.-2 a few years back. Perhaps it might have been funnier if the pranks had been played on real people rather than fictional characters. Still, you have to admire its nerve. Where else would you see Yul Brynner in drag singing Noel Coward's 'Mad About The Boy' to Roman Polanski's lone drinker? The catchy title theme - 'Come & Get It' - was by Paul McCartney and performed by 'Badfinger'.
Limited "cult following" status to the contrary, I'm not surprised at the 5.9 rating by the 1,500 odd voters accustomed to the current marginal (and copy cat) plots, limbic manipulations, clichéd special effects and derivative nature of post-millennial film-making. This, after all, is a Monty Pythonesque rendition of a Terry Southern novel (see "Candy," "Barbarella," "Easy Rider," "The Loved One" and "Dr. Strangelove "). (Would those who beat their brains senseless by pounding on their PDAs and X Boxes know the truth if it bit them in the nose? Please.)Southern saw the culture for what it is and has been since the Old Kingdom on the Nile five thousand years ago. "Money talks." Most of us want to believe we care about AIDS in Central Africa, the starving in Dafur, the oppressed in Lybia, the fate of the Tibetans, the fate of the over-populated, under-educated, over-heated, radiation-poisoned =planet=. But what we really care about is comfort, and what it takes to purchase however much of it we believe to be our due. Born in Alvarado, Texas, and strained through the sifter of military experience in World War II, Southern was no "hippie." He was far more down with Marquand, Richler, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Sartre and Camus than the histrionic, wanna-be-hip, but discipline-bereft and chemically crop-sprayed pseudo-intellectuals of the late '60s and early '70s. If you're into psychology, think Bateson, Baumrind, Berne, Ellis, Fairbairn, Henry, Jackson, Karpman, Klein, Laing, Miller, Schaef and Sullivan rather than Bradshaw, Dyer, Forward, Harris, McGraw and Schlesinger, for example. If you're into music lyrics, think Lennon, Morissette, Olazabal and Townshend rather than Hayward, Jagger, Lynne and Tyler. That there are people in the world who can buy the behavior of virtually anyone, including those who =appear= to be "powerful," may continue to make many folks squirm. We'd like to believe in truth, justice, freedom and the Easter Bunny. That Vegas doesn't fix major sports events, that doctors know best, and the Supreme Court doesn't steal elections. But money talks. In "TMC," that particular message is packaged a bit heavy-handedly at moments, but the piece can be as beguiling – and actually meaningful – as the similarly rompy "Rocky Horror Picture Show," "The Meaning of Life," "The Producers," "Blazing Saddles," and "Network," if one knows how to pry their mind open for 92 minutes in some (ahem) appropriate way.