Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Best movie ever!

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Mike Leigh's jet black comedy of manners shouldn't be reviewed as a film; strictly speaking, it's a video document of his own stage play, performed as theater. The play itself is an often brilliant one-act satire, charting the total disintegration of an intimate cocktail party controlled by an aggressively bourgeois hostess (Alison Steadman) and her ineffective husband. The escalating tensions between each guest (one of them exiled from her daughter Abigail's punk rock party, heard but never seen offstage) suggest a clever parody of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?', blending acute social embarrassment with moments of absurd but often hilarious tragedy. Middle class envy and pretensions have rarely been savaged with such glee, and on a purely technical level it offers a fine example of how to film a play as a play, with the camera intruding only far enough onto the stage to capture every nuance of the performances.

I never saw 'Abigail's Party' in 1977 and seemed to have missed the repeats, so I was grateful to 'The Observer' for giving the D.V.D. away last Sunday. It was devised and directed by the talented Mike Leigh, with the dialogue improvised by the cast.It centres around a posh party thrown by overbearing Beverly ( Alison Steadman ) and her control freak husband Lawrence ( Tim Stern ). They have invited their neighbours - divorcée Susan ( Harriet Reynolds ) and husband-and-wife Angela ( the wonderful Janine Duvitski ) and Tony ( John Salthouse ).Beverly's taste in music extends as far as Tom Jones and Demis Roussos ( the obese Greek who got to No.1 in Britain in the mid-'70's with 'Forever & Ever' ) and her idea of art is tacky pseudo-porn. Lawrence fancies himself as an art buff, listens to James Galway, and brags about owning 'The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare', despite never having read a word. Angela is every bit as vapid as Beverly, and while they chat Tony looks thoroughly embarrassed. He is like a volcano waiting to erupt and at the end, does.Poor Susan has gone to the party mainly to escape from the one her daughter, the Abigail of the title, is currently throwing. From all accounts it sounds like the orgy of the century. She too is a reluctant guest ( and vomits in the bathroom at one point ). Beverley's probing questions about her failed marriage causes her distress, but the hostess appears not to notice. So you have an interesting mix of characters here. Lawrence and Beverly are perfect examples of people trying to be something they are not. Another reviewer claims this is a revealing snap-shot of '70's life, but I beg to differ. Change the fashions, alter a few details here and there, and the story would work now. We've all been to parties like this, where the men are sidelined by the women ( I went to one in June ), and we've all met a dozen or so social-climbers like 'Beverly'. The era in which it was made is irrelevant.Nothing much happens over the course of 101 minutes ( Lawrence and Beverly row over art, and he experiences a fatal heart attack ), but the dialogue is believable and performances are uniformly excellent, particularly Alison Steadman as the dreadful, self-obsessed 'Beverly'. She has been rightly described as the prototype for 'Edina' from 'Absolutely Fabulous'. Chain smoking, talking rubbish, flirting openly with her male guests, she is a total pain ( though admittedly very sexy! ). Janine Duvitski's 'Angela' likewise has much in common with 'Pippa', her 'One Foot In The Grave' character.Like the title character in 'Waiting For Godot', Abigail is only talked about but never seen. In the years since its broadcast, the play has acquired a cult following, and some fans stage their own parties by way of tribute. So thanks to the 'Observer' for letting me have a good laugh for free. The accompanying article, however, featured the likes of Arabella Weir, Julia Davis, and Tony Holland all claiming to have derived inspiration from Mike Leigh's play. In what way? 'Abigail's Party' was funny!

This 'Play for Today' is brilliant, I remember watching them and this one inparticular. If I remember right it would have been a Saturday night. I did not relise the social signifcance of the play until years later when it clicked and I realised it mirrored my loony family! My Mother, Aunties and Grandmother would hold 'do's' like this, and the spoke like it as well, complete and utter 'boredoom'. The discussions would centre on each other kids (My Cousins and me), the latest car in the family, the furniture (usually from 'Habicrap' or G-Plan). One social yard stick was how many bottles of spirit and booze could be collected and stored. The yucky '70's wall paper, ornaments and 'suites', egh, I can see why men, like me son's of women like this, of a certain age got hobbies around this time that stayed with them when they got married. The other subject discussed was jobs and it would end up in a heated discussion of who had the best and most paid. I can see why home computers and the invention of Satellite TV came about, to escape this moronic '70's life. A brilliant film that reminds one how bad it was. Oh, Alison is gorgeous...

Abigail's Party: 2/10. This is a poorly lit (especially first half) extremely stagy TV show (basically a filmed play.) Highly regarded by some critics but at close to two hours with 5 very unpleasant people it hardly ranks as entertainment. The main character Beverly reminds one of Peg from Married with Children but with no Al to provide the counter pointing laughs she remains strangely unchallenged throughout. In fact the description of Abigail's Party as a comedy is a bit of a puzzler as this is drama writ large. A true character exercise only a stage actor could love. While insightful into the desperation of some of the middle class of England, countless movies and shows have exposed middle class foibles with better results. Even a half hour sitcom like "Keeping Up Appearances" covers the same ground more completely and with many more laughs. Truth be told these people would be miserable no matter what class they were in and like a trapped guest I was looking to leave Abigail's Party as soon as I could.