Truly Dreadful Film

best movie i've ever seen.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is a that only a small minority of watchers will get. But don't be put off, because you end up being one of those people you will be extremely grateful that you made the effort.I don't believe it crosses the ocean well either, it's sense of comedy is not that which the larger audiences in places like the U.S. seem to understand, and that's not meant as any kind of insult.People watching because they think they are getting a riotous comedy or a slapstick laugh a minute will be in for a confused shock. A friend who watched it with me one time over here (here being the UK) from California asked me at the end "what the hell was that all about?"However those after something different with masterful performances by fine actors creating a sometimes bizarre and yes, sometimes very funny story, that gels together seamlessly to produce an immense feeling of having watched something quite magical, will be in for a treat such as comes around far to seldom in the movie World.Featuring a great mix of music, it's also visually a screenplay par excellence'. Capturing moments from an age now gone from the yesteryear of many an English childhood that are so totally recognisable as to transport you back there like some kind of magical time machine. Perhaps another reason why it works so poorly with audiences from across the pond.It's a real treat, and I hope you are one of the few who gets it, because it's a ride surely worth seeking out.

Widely unknown gem that explores the source of comedy. Oliver Platt plays the unfunny son (Tommy) of an enormously successful comedian played by Jerry Lewis (George). Tommy, after a tragic debut of his stand-up comedy act in Las Vegas, goes back to his birth hometown in England in search of what is funny. In England, Tommy discovers aging vaudevillians and their quirky acts, one of which he recognizes. He then explores the family who perform this familiar act, finding more than comedy.While the film's subplot about a mystical eastern powder smuggled in large wax eggs at first appears better edited out, it provides a tenuously apt metaphor.The greatest part of this charming story comes from learning about the family and their history. And we learn of the tragedy and pathos deep within their comedy.I've always firmly believed the old tenet that the best comedy has threads of tragedy (or menace) in it. And in England, failed comic Tommy discovers this as well. As Tommy, Oliver Platt shows his own pathos from the start and is remarkable. The rest of the cast is a marvel: Leslie Caron is absolutely gorgeous, especially in her man's shirt, untucked, singing a cabaret song. The procession of old vaudevillians are a delight in a montage, and Freddie Davies and George Carl as an aging brother act are a revelation, a beacon illuminating the forgotten immense talent of days gone by. But the film belongs to the remarkable talents of young Lee Evans as the perhaps dimwitted son Jack. Here, we see in Evans, and in his character, a source of comedy so organic and abundant that Jim Carrey and his characters now look utterly forced and sham. And it's a shame that Evans is not as well known worldwide as Carrey; this fact being another of comedy's tragedies. Oddly, or aptly, Jerry Lewis plays one of the most serious characters in the film because he has to confront and admit the source of his own comedy. To the Jerry Lewis-phobic audience, fear not: he is actually very good here, probably because he largely, generously, takes a back seat to the more central characters. In Hitchcock parlance, Lewis' character is something of the "MacGuffin" that drives the larger story, and Lewis appears to understand this.The style of direction is quirky, showing much charm in the old seaside town in England that was, in some long ago day (when the sun seemed to shine every day), a center for quality vaudeville. And the viewer gets to delight in two hours' evidence of what Platt's character believes: that (in my favorite line of the film), "...all the best things in life belong to the past." Overall, hardly a perfect film. Yet it's one that stays with you. There's much love, charm and laughs in this work that may leave you feeling compelled to add to your list of all-time favorites.

They describe this movie as a black comedy about a stand-up comic trying to make it as a comic just like his dad did so successfully, however he fails miserably. As I watched it, I was asking myself why I am watching this movie. It is boring, predictable and misses the mark on being entertaining. Oliver Platt's character was not relatable, likable or fascinating. At the end I didn't care how he ended up or any of the characters for that matter. Nothing stood out as amazing, wonderful or even entertaining. Scenes were too long, dialog was boring and the plot line sounds better on paper than it played out to be on film. This movie totally missed the mark - don't watch it.

Not really a comedy - more a surreal, sometimes weirdly comic piece about comedians, about families, about the awfulness of having a famous father, about genius, about the problem of what makes a comic funny, about the sublime sadness of failure. Lee Evans is absolutely haunting as the tortured comic genius, the natural comic who is so purely a comedian that he can barely communicate except in gags, yet who will never be allowed to perform in public because of his dark past. Leslie Caron is heart-rending as his mother, a brave, faded French beauty stranded for ever singing mildly risque songs in Blackpool pubs, and their tender scenes together are for me the best thing in the whole film.The whole cast is incredible...right down to Oliver Reed camping it up gloriously in a bizarre sub-plot which at first I thought might be part of the Evans' character's fevered imagination. It is a movie absolutely crammed with magic but in one of my favourite scenes, Oliver Platt arrives in Blackpool and instantly sees it peopled with characters from Donald McGill postcards - fat ladies, saucy girls with flouncy skirts, burly men. The ending is a bit wonky and looks to my eye to have been changed from a tragic one to a "happy" one to please audiences. In the two opening sequences, both Evans and Platt utter the words "I'm going to die" in very different circumstances, and mean very different things, and other variations on the theme of death and laughter follow - all this seemed to be pointing down a much darker alleyway than the one we got. Doesn't matter, though. Still a great movie.