The greatest movie ever!

Good concept, poorly executed.

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

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

A Cock and Bull Story is another collaboration between Steve Coogan and director Michael Winterbottom. They had combined to extremely successful effect in their earlier film about Tony Wilson and the Madchester scene, 24 Hour Party People (2002). Here, they go down a slightly more experimental road with a look at film-makers and actors trying to adapt an 18th century classic novel hitherto considered unfilmable, namely 'The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman' by Laurence Sterne. It appears that quite a lot of the negative reviews directed at this one come quite often from people who thought they were going to see an actual attempt at adapting this book, which is a fair enough assumption I guess given the title and poster. But it only is this for the first half-an-hour or so and then becomes a film about the making of the adaption, it ultimately results in a movie which fails to bring to the screen a novel which people said could never be brought to the screen, which is a reasonable idea I reckon. So it is best to go into this one knowing what it's not going to be. As it transpires it is practically plot-less which centres on Coogan playing a version of himself dealing with some minor dramas and squabbles behind the scenes of the movie-making. It's a wilfully loose approach which seemingly mirrors the novel which was pioneering in its flippant disregard to conventional narrative expectations of its day.All this is well and good but what makes it truly work is that it is that rare thing, a genuinely funny comedy. Coogan and co-star Rob Brydon – who also played similar versions of themselves in Winterbottom's TV series 'The Trip' - work fantastically well together. They have superb comic chemistry, their constant bickering over all manner of trivial matters is proper laugh-out loud stuff much of the time. It feels quite ad-libbed as well, with an extremely amusing sequence of the pair of them doing Al Pacino impressions over the end credits being a particularly funny example. Brydon is especially amusing in this film, with his periodic impressions of Coogan being another highlight. While Coogan's nightmare of Brydon being the star of the movie with Gillian Anderson on his arm while sporting a Roger Moore voice, was just too funny. Coogan himself has an uproarious inspired scene all to himself where he practices acting out what it would be like having a hot chestnut drop down his trouser-leg only to then try the real thing to hilarious effect. There are many other individual moments of inspired comedy to be found here too and this is one of the few movies where the deleted scenes on the DVD simply have to be watched also! The cast is fleshed out by a great ensemble of talented actors, many of which from British TV and everyone puts in a good turn. This is one of those films whose post-modern approach sort of makes it difficult to explain very well in words and which really needs to be seen in order to understand. Its well worth taking a punt with this one though as it provides great comic acting within what is a pretty original framework. It's essentially another impressive success from Winterbottom, Coogan and Brydon.

I loved the opening scene, a parody and rip off of Peter Greenaway's 'The Draughtsman's Contract' with its jaunty Elizabethan sounding chamber music and the actors walking around the garden early morning, in period style.Whether the viewer knows of, or even cares about the unfilmable novel they're supposed to be filming is of little matter. The 18th century novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen, seems obscure and impossible to follow, at least as it's presented here. That's because Michael Winterbottom's follow up to his brilliant 24 Hour Party People, but which goes in an as opposite direction as possible, neatly follows the film being made.With the current enthusiasm for period drama, with Downton Abbey et al, this is specially pertinent. And with recent TV half-hour comedies, we know that Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon make very comfortable comedic bed- fellows, with impersonating banter and sparring off each other and here, they do just that - and it's great. A whole host of almost every known face in U.K. TV comedy kingdom are somehow dropping in their comments and gags, usually pertinent to the film, some not.As I said, for most, the actual narrative elements of the novel being filmed quickly take a back seat and attempts to associate scenes with those and what they mean just gets hazy and confusing. So, for us mere mortals, we don't care whether Coogan, as actual modern Steve Coogan is a fictionalised version of the original Tristram Shandy and so the domestic scenes become dreary. We don't really need to see babies being put to bed, do we?This was my second viewing, on BBC2 and it was still interesting. As a mockumentary, a semi-serious send up of that so very British Institution, the period drama it works well, as does the loosely-written comedic interludes. Though the critics may cringe and disagree (they liked this film), it's probably too clever for its own good but I'm quite comfortable thinking that I'm enjoying a film that the literary dons do, too.

If few of us watching Tristram Shandy were aware that the film was shot on video and not film, this is because the content may have been carefully chosen to help us go on the journey and forget the look of the movie.We associate the film medium with the movies and we tend to suspend our disbelief accordingly. When we see video, (even hi-definition video) we associate the content with documentary.It's all in the grey matter. Video can be as good as film - even better - but it has yet to help us dream the way film does. Successive attempts to do so have lost money, which is why, once a producers have hired actors, caterers, etc, etc then they might as well pay the little extra for the box-office guarantee that film provides.Tristram Shandy, in the tradition of the Russian Ark (2002), combines dramatic content, sumptuous costumes and classical decor with an alternately journalistic style complete with presenter, unsteady hand-held camera and almost a reality TV insight into the film-making world.The trick of using just enough documentary content to woo our subconscious into accepting HD video as a drama medium for the movies got me - hook, line and sinker! In terms of our evolution from film media into a purely digital one, Tristram Shandy is a significant milestone.

"Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story" is adapted from the way-ahead-of-its time novel by Laurence Sterne, who was writing like Charlie Kaufman 200 years before Charlie Kaufman was born. From what I understand, the book is ostensibly Tristram's autobiography, but he keeps rambling off course to discuss other events. In this movie version, the filmmakers add an extra postmodern layer by making a movie about how difficult it is to make a movie of "Tristram Shandy." Oddly enough, the filmmakers actually make a pretty good case for translating this supposedly unfilmable novel to the screen. The first 30 minutes of the movie are a faithful adaptation of "Tristram Shandy"--meaning, it includes the digressions and comic asides that make the novel so distinctive. Steve Coogan plays Tristram narrating the events of his own birth, as well as Tristram's father Walter; Rob Brydon plays Tristram's eccentric Uncle Toby. For an adaptation of a long and difficult 18th-century novel, it's surprisingly snappy and enjoyable.Then things get even more "meta," when the perspective shifts to watching the actors, writers, and aides try to film this version of "Tristram Shandy." Though "A Cock and Bull Story" is always clever and entertaining, I felt it lost something when the behind-the-scenes action started up: it became slower and shaggier. The "real-world" problems facing the characters (film production running overbudget, last-minute rewrites, Steve Coogan's messy love life) are too numerous, and few of them ever get resolved. As a comparison, my favorite making-of-a-movie movie is "Day for Night," which better integrates the film-within-the-film into the storyline, and shows more sympathy for its characters.The characters in "A Cock and Bull Story," however, are caricatures of recognizable movie-industry types, and the actors seem to enjoy playing exaggerated versions of themselves. Coogan and Brydon make a classic comedy double act--Coogan the egotistical, condescending big shot and Brydon the runner-up constantly trying to knock him down a peg. Their improvised riffs are a highlight of the movie.The eccentricities of "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story" will definitely appeal to people who like "British humor." But the nice thing about the movie is that for every dry, cerebral joke, there's a broad populist joke that involves people getting injured or humiliated--the stuff of low comedy. Best scene is where Coogan gets lowered, head first, into a giant papier-maché womb: it's both a hilarious visual gag that anyone can appreciate, and a more refined joke about the crazy things that happen while making a movie.