Watch Noises Off... For Free

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Sadly Over-hyped

Nice effects though.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I first encountered Noises Off... being performed by an amateur dramatic society at my local theatre.It starts off in a way which will be familiar to many theatregoers - a housekeeper is looking after the house of a wealthy couple who are away from England in tax exile. The estate agent who is dealing with letting the house arrives for an assignation with his girlfriend. Then the couple themselves arrive back unannounced and secretly. The estate agent's girlfriend works for the tax authorities.... and her father is a burglar... All the ingredients of a (to be frank) not very good stage farce are introduced. Then it becomes clear that we are not watching a farce, we are watching the final dress rehearsal for the first night of a professional company taking a farce on tour. As well as meeting the first act of the farce - its plot, dialogue and characters - we also meet the actors playing in it, the director, and the stage manager - and their various relationships.The second act of the film meets the company in mid-tour. They now have the farce performance slickly nailed down, but relationships between the company are disintegrating. The genius of act 2 is that it takes place behind stage - much of it is performed mute - we hear the dialogue of act 1 of the farce taking place on the other side of the scenery flats: despite personal problems, the play is still being performed with great professionalism (except by the alcoholic playing the burglar).By act 3, which is act 1 of the farce yet again, seen from the audience once more, the play has reached theatreland (the West End / Broadway), but relationships between the cast have deteriorated to the extent that they are now sabotaging each others' performances.This is a sparkling play - brilliantly clever, and screamingly funny on so many levels. The film, too, captures the best of the play, with a sparkling cast all performing at the top of their game.The play - and the film - are a delight, and are highly recommended.

I remember seeing a 'classic' British theatrical comedy as a teenager in London, 'No Sex Please We're British' in the late 1970's and my vague recollection was it was rather good fun and despite the farcical nature of the play; usually an anathema to a cynical 14 year old; I laughed. More than once. The live action added so much to the experience. 'Noises Off' is a film about the staging of a similar production but we get to see the farce behind the farce. Or at least that appears to be the intention. Unfortunately I did not laugh once. I smirked and appreciated the talents of the actors involved. The cast is on the whole pretty good (Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Denholm Elliott, Julie Hagerty, Marilu Henner, Mark Linn-Baker, Christopher Reeve, John Ritter, Nicollette Sheridan, Kate Rich) and all involved do a more than passable job with the script. This comment may appear contradictory to the overall summary I have given, but I am truly baffled as to the "tears of laughter", "you'll laugh from beginning to end", "I could not stop laughing during the entire movie!", " Completely hysterical!" and other hyperbole used by many of the 'critics' on this site about this film.I can see how the original theatrical production would have worked as a live performance and the complexity of action would have been very funny on the stage. But as a film? While it is indeed a well written piece of theatre, as a comedy film, it looses so much in translation, it just isn't that good. So, worth seeing? Yes - but do not expect too much. If you buy this DVD, on a comedy scale, expect it to be amusing at best.

'Noises Off' concerns a bad play performed from different angles, 3 times in a row. The movie was previously a stage hit and each of the 3 internal performances was clearly an act unto itself. Act 1 shows a disastrous rehearsal. Act 2 involving an axe, and lots of silent pantomime has the funniest sustained moments. Act 3 results in a few amusing metaphysical impossibilities (related to the stage world) and, say, a few sentences composed entirely of nouns. At moments, it almost reaches a level of absurdity, and lingual absurdity, found in two or three Tom Stoppard plays, except that none of the laughs deepen things, or produces any meaning.The movie retains the plays structure and that decision is fatal. Both Acts 2 & 3 depict disastrous performances. And the artificiality in the film world of waiting for act 2 (back-stage disaster) to conclude, before showing Act 3 (front-stage disaster) is artificial and trying. It becomes very irritating to watch the play again and again (and again). If you're going to liberate the stage-hit with a moving camera and editing, as it is here, there's simply no natural reason in a film to endure the play three times. The camera should have moved between the best bits of act two, the best bits of act three and spare us the third repetition, which by that point is irritating beyond belief. Condense! We don't sit through Three Act "play transfers" anymore. There also comes a point in all of this that a viewer notes that the disastrous version of the play is not much different than an accurate performance of the bad play, so the stakes are very low. There's really only a handful of gambits (some rivalries, dropped pants, keeping a drunk sober, some lovers' quarrels) that are used so frantically & interchangeably that they become dross by Act 3. There's just no arc to it; nothing but superficialities develop over it's long length. And two hours of sitcom vacuousness is too much for me.The cast of familiar, second-tier American actors produces a distraction; one waits to see if each actor can do a British accent, and then it turns out not to matter (They're all playing bad actors). Oh what I'd give to see every movie ever made, made with no-name actors. Other strange choices produce confusion: We're supposed to believe that 40-something Ritter is romantically involved with 59 yr old Burnett? Oh well, what can you do? Burnett delivers most of the funny lines.

Fortunately, enough of the stage script survives its transfer to film that attentive viewers can tell why "Noises Off" remains one of the funniest farces ever to visit the Theatre.But somewhere along the way from stage to screen, "Noises Off" became calcified and entirely lost its edge. It's played broadly here by an able cast, all of whom clearly loved it on stage as well and now share the blame for this thoroughly noisy, but unfortunately moribund comedy show.Clearly, the film's severest critics in this conference are those (like myself) who enjoyed the show on stage in London or New York. If you didn't have that privilege, it may actually work to your advantage as you can come fresh to the film--and many, clearly, have enjoyed it tremendously. For myself, however, I remember laughing so hard in a Broadway theatre one night that my eyes flooded with tears. Didn't happen here, alas.