Really Surprised!

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

So says Michael Palin after his wife Maggie Smith thrusts a knife into his hands, demanding that he kill the filthy beast making a mess in their middle class home. It is just after the war and there is a meat shortage. Butchers close faster than they open and some are accused of passing if horse as beef. Smith is a bit of a social climber here, trying too hard to impress those who are in a higher class. Neighbors suspect something is up as the odor from their house is unbearable. In fact, the pig is seen urinating, but fortunately, the audience is spared the sight of it defacating. In short, this is a black comedy that may not be for all tastes, especially those who don't eat pork.After their teaming in "The Missionary", Palin and Smith were reunited for this strange comedy where the goal seems to be about making the audience sit gaping. As always, Smith is center of attention, but even she has a difficult time holding court when Liz Smith is on as her somewhat senile mother. Palin is delightfully droll, and Denholm Elliott and Richard Griffiths add authority. I really had a difficult time in tying to perceive what the film was trying to say, but had a hard time in finding fault with the darkness of the situation. So while I don't think I ever venture back in watching this again, I still recommend it for its performances, especially the two Smiths.

Sometimes in 1947 Britain it was hard to grasp that we had "won the war" as we used to say in those days with scant regard for the efforts of our Russian and American allies.Everything was "On the ration",the shops were half - empty,British Industry was struggling with the burden of "Export or Die" and returning servicemen were finding that their jobs had been taken by non - combatants in their absence.Germany,on the other hand,was being rebuilt by the Yanks at astronomical expense whilst we were the recipients of the occasional "food parcel"Were we bitter?I should say so.Hence any chance to hit back at "them"(the government,authority in general,those seen as untouched by years of hardship) was seized with alacrity. Thus the Black Market thrived.If a butcher(Mr P Postlethwaite,say)had kept back one of his pigs from the men from the Ministry of Agriculture to keep for his own use it would be seen as a perfectly acceptable gesture particularly if we were to be beneficiaries from the crime through his shop. In "A Private Function" that master of the extraordinary ordinary Mr Alan Bennett has captured that era of spivs with cardboard suitcases alighting from black Morris Eights,dodgy nylons,blue - painted horse meat and large crispy fivers as if preserved in amber. He well knows the social aspirations of lower middle class Brits and the lengths they would(would? - still will..)go to in order to "improve" their perceived standing in the community.Miss M.Smith's ambitions in this area know no bounds.Her unfortunate husband(Mr M.Palin - mercifully a Python - Free performance for once) is completely in her thrall. He steals Mr Postlethwaite's pig and keeps it for use at the eponymous Private Function to celebrate the wedding of Princess Elizabeth,hoping to ensure favourable reaction to his application to open a shop and also to further his wife's social hopes. Almost parochially British in content,"Private Function" may be a curate's egg for those to whom our manners and mores are a bit of a mystery,but those looking for a successor to the old Alec Guinness - Stanley Holloway school of comedies need look no further.

This film, comes from the time, when Meat was in very short supply. and you were very lucky if you got your supper of bacon. The Pig I thought was very well trained to do what it did, I also did not realise that the police could arrest you if you had loads of meat in your larder. I enjoyed the whole film and Found the Mother funny when she saw the pig, but was told, "when you answer the door, there's no pig" and when she said to the chap " You Smell" it was the pig that smelt not him. So If you liked your meat, you had to go Canny! as they would say in the war. This film to me was very well made I would not of liked to been a Butcher then, as crowds of House wives wanted their scrag end every day and "Would you like a sausage," I would have to say 12,000 times a week to my favourite house wives (Friends)One thing comes to mind, I would not keep the pig in my kitchen as he has nowhere to do his business! I would put it in a sty that I had built in my back garden.

A near classic; like something Ealing might have done if, perhaps, raunchier though not necessarily darker. Set at the time of the present Queen Elizabeth's wedding to Prince Phillip, it's about the petty jealousies of the ostensible middle-classes of Northern ration-book Britain.Michael Palin is Gilbert, a mild-mannered chiropodist, looked down upon, in all senses, by the local community who finds his trump card and way into society in the form of a pig that is being fattened for the private function of the title, a dinner for local dignitaries in celebration of the royal wedding. Maggie Smith is his genteel wife who turns into Lady MacBeth in pursuit of her dreams of fitting in and that great character actress Liz Smith is her slightly dotty mother. Scriptwriter Alan Bennet's depiction of the milieu of false noblesse oblige is as sharp as ever and the entire cast rise to the occasion.