Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

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.

About 30 years ago, Boston's only classical music radio station used to offer a program (after its Saturday live broadcast of the Boston Symphony) that played lots of recorded British comedy, including excerpts from "Beyond the Fringe." It was from listening to that show every week that I got to learn by heart many of the routines from this legendary stage production that started the careers of Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. This DVD now provides an opportunity to see the quartet in action, and to realize just how brilliant they were, individually and as a team.The great routines are still great. Peter Cook was a lost genius (lost, ultimately, to drink and dissipation), and his long monologue as the miner who didn't become a judge because he didn't have the Latin is a masterpiece - only in part because his deadpan stare at the audience remains unbroken even while he's speaking the most amazing nonsense. Dudley Moore, it turns out, was also something of a lost genius (lost, in his case, to Hollywood) - his musical interludes are extraordinarily accurate parodies of various classical music styles, including an eerie impersonation of Sir Peter Pears and a set of Beethovenian variations on "The Colonel Bogey March" that gets wildly out of hand.Another masterpiece is Alan Bennett's vaporous, meandering sermon, which includes a pointless retelling of the time he and a friend went climbing to the top of a mountain, at which point "my friend very suddenly and very violently vomited. I sometimes think life's a lot like that." Jonathan Miller is the least proficient actor of the group - he mugs and gesticulates and mutters a little too much, and it's probably for the best that he gave up performing in favor of medicine and opera direction.The video has a few technical faults, particularly in its sound, but the camera-work is good. For anyone even remotely interested in British comedy (and in seeing where Monty Python came from), this is a must.

If you want to laugh then see this show. This is sketch comedy at its finest, as Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore and Peter Cook riff on pretty much everything under the sun from religion, Philosophy, music, the end of the world and being a miner. Its a wild mix of nothing is sacred humor with a very clever edge.If you want to trace the history of British comedy one would start with the music halls move on to the Goons stopping at this show before moving on to people like the Goodies, Monty Python and Eddie Izzard. These are the guys and this is the show that began, in part the draining of the colleges and setting them to work for places like the BBC. Python took the anarchic sketch comedy found here and welded the insanity of Spike Milligan and the Goons. If you need more proof consider that a good number of bits from this show ended up in the Secret Policemen's Balls that were staged by the members of Python for Amnesty International. They used the material because its funny.Historical importance aside this is a very funny show. Certainly there are bits that have dated since it was first performed but on the whole the show remains relevant, and above all funny. If you like to laugh see this show.

I was delighted to view this tele-recording for two reasons. Firstly, it's well and truly hilarious. Secondly, the recovery of this long-lost recording vindicates for television something I've long maintained for cinema films: no movie or TV programme should be considered 'lost' unless it was deliberately destroyed. Sadly, the BBC are notorious for wiping their own programmes and taping over them ... and so, far too many great moments of British television history are indeed gone forever. Unless the transmission patterns are still bouncing off Alpha Centauri.Another IMDb contributor, Elena-48, has already reviewed this recording. Elena's review is perceptive but contains one niggling error: Alan Bennett's sermon is ostensibly about Esau and Jacob, not Ezra. Bennett's sermon is hilarious, as he piously and pretentiously draws metaphors between sardine tins and human existence. ('I wonder: is there a little bit you can't reach under the sardine tin of your life? I know there is under mine.') Here's something which this recording doesn't mention: an audiotape of Bennett's hilariously pretentious sermon is now used as a training tape in the Anglican church, warning newly ordained priests of the sort of claptrap they must avoid.The opening sketch, with its references to the Cold War and Harold Macmillan, is necessarily dated but still funny ... especially when Peter Cook warns the gaunt Jonathan Miller to 'try to look well-fed'. Elsewhere, we have Miller as a prisoner in a death cell: Cook bookends this routine, setting the scene and then returning for the punchline.Cook and Dudley Moore perform their brilliant 'One Leg Too Few' sketch, with Moore as the one-legged 'unidexter' auditioning for the role of Tarzan. Over the decades, Cook and Moore performed this routine hundreds of times, forcing Moore to spend many cumulative hours hopping on one foot. As Moore actually had a clubfoot (only partially corrected), the effect on him was not pleasant. But the routine is uproarious.At intervals throughout, Moore performs his brilliant piano solos. The entire cast perform 'So That's the Way You Like It', skewering Shakespeare hilariously. Less effective is a routine in which all four portray camp homosexuals. A high point is Jonathan Miller's bizarre monologue, 'The Heat-Death of the Universe', pondering the fate of trousers that are abandoned on British Railway trains.My own favourite here -- a quietly hilarious set-piece -- is Cook's solo turn, as a demented monologist sitting on a bench, explaining why he could have been a judge but ended up being a coal miner. Although the character is never named here, Cook privately named this creation E.L. Wisty, and depicted him many times over the decades. Cook's E.L. Wisty routine changed significantly at each performance, as Cook introduced new improvisations.Periodically throughout this taped performance, the camera cuts away to show the audience. I felt this was a mistake, as the laughter on the soundtrack makes it clear that there's a live audience. Much more effective are the close-in shots, enabling us to see the expressions on the faces of the cast as the sadistic Cook ad-libs, trying to 'corpse' his castmates (especially Moore) and make them break character as they burst out laughing.With Cuddly Dudley and 'Cookie' now both dead, and Bennett and Miller having largely forsaken performance in favour of their other talents, it's a delight to be able to see this crucial record of these four comedic geniuses at their peak. And this show is pretty damned funny, too. I'll rate it absolutely 10 out of 10.

We saw a tape (in glorious Black and White) of the Closing Night of Beyond The Fringe (1964) at the New York Museum of Television and Radio. There was a remark in the Website that the full tape of this show is lost or erased but this tape was 2 hours long.Although the tape quality was not always good (especially the sound!) and the audience looked oddly wooden we so enjoyed seeing this. Dudley Moore was such a great Parodist and Musician. He does parodies of Brecht, Schubert and Britten (Britten's Little Miss Muffett was especially funny). How sad that both he and Peter Cook are now dead. We also enjoyed seeing Alan Bennett again doing his bit as the Vicar giving a long rambling sermon based on Ezra "My brother is a hairy man but I am a smooth man..." Was this once once broadcast on PBS?Could some industry executive PLEASE put this out on DVD as soon as possible!!! And while we're at it what about Bennett's Talking Heads? At present it is only available in the UK.