The Worst Film Ever

Simply Perfect

Sadly Over-hyped

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING feels like a natural follow-up to WITHNAIL & I for director Bruce Robinson. It's another cult, quirky, idiosyncratic story, even more bizarre than the cult classic which preceded it. Richard E. Grant gives perhaps the most manic performance of his career as an advertising executive who succumbs to the pressure of the job and begins to imagine that a living, conscious boil is growing out of his shoulder. It's a bizarre and gruesome premise for sure, but one which feels remarkably grounded given Grant's warts-and-all performance. He dominates every screen in what is a very difficult part to play and he succeeds admirably. The rest of the film is a mix of quick-fire monologues, plenty of satire aimed at advertising and consumerism, and well-judged supporting performances.

It is fascinating that after viewing How to Get Ahead in Advertising I began to think of similarities to Terry Gilliam's adaptation to Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Both are very much comedies, yet in a more cerebral, dialogue driven way than just a vehicle for cheap laughs. These movies are funny in a way that makes the audience think and see the satire that is laid out before them. The world we live in is crazy and these tales subvert the insanity in order to comment on it. Originally I was expecting a British comedy of dry humor and good old-fashioned cheekiness and instead was surprised to find a dialogue heavy drama made funny by the fantastic performance from lead Richard E. Grant. Director Bruce Robinson has only directed three films in his career and, along with Withnail and I, has twice been given the Criterion Collection treatment. I will definitely be checking that film out post haste as I finally have reason to other than the strict curiosity struck by the drawings of Ralph Steadman, who coincidentally drew for Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing included. To make the small world seem even smaller, it appears Robinson has become attached to direct that film's sequel, The Rum Diary. While I love Gilliam, I am excited by the prospects of Robinson's like-mindedness combining with the genius that was Thompson's writing to weave a new masterpiece around Johnny Depp's return performance. I will however hope for an appearance from Grant as he is underused in cinema yet proves here he can handle a role that most definitely will be included in a Thompson story.Grant is an ad-exec at the top of his game. He is the go-to-guy for all sales pitches and at the moment is on the job to sell pimple cream. It ends up that he has no clue how to come up with an idea to end boils. The weight of the stress and anxiety soon becomes too much, and not only does a boil form on his shoulder, but it also begins to speak to him. The cutthroat panache he has used to build his career becomes fractured with a new sense of being and enlightenment to the fact that advertising, as an occupation, is a way of population control. Grant becomes aware that people like him have created a "big brother" type regulating that which the public buys and very well needs to survive. This newfound conscious soon finds itself berated and overtaken by the driven mentality displaced to the boil. All the ferocity he once held in check to be successful has become a split personality to be wholly unleashed on the world.The duality of character is left ambiguous throughout the film, as you never truly know whether the boil is alive or if both personalities come from an irrational mind. Grant plays the moments with perfect comic timing, oftentimes covering his mouth when the boil talks even though the voice is different than his own. The filmmakers do a great job of keeping the audience guessing, especially when early on we see him talking into a camera with the boil speaking while his mouth remains closed. We would then believe that the voice is real and separate from his mind until later on when his wife views the film. Grant's character in real life speaks the lines the boil would have on the tape, thus subverting whether the voice was real at all. Is he drowning out the boil or was the boil never speaking and only silence would have been heard had he not spoken in the present? All instances of philosophical inquiry into the mind control advertisers have over the general public are deftly handled and serious in tone. It is this give and take between the cerebral and the insane that makes the film work. Without Grant's total encompassing of his role, How to Get Ahead in Advertising would ultimately fail and become a pretentious mess of ill-conceived scope. His performance grounds the insight given into some realm of reality and helps allow the over-stylized approach work by making fun of its own pretentiousness.

Like an intensive dinner-party guest, this film will keep you uncomfortably entertained. Don't worry about making conversation or serving it crepes, because Bruce Robinson has produced a beast that lives inside big brother, but sounds and looks like a siren sister.Richard E Grant is imperious as the sociopathic marketing executive, Dennis Bagley, charged with the challenge of selling pimple cream. Knowing that to sell a product that eliminated pimples would also eradicate the need to sell the product, he is stuck in a horrific mental block. Super-articulate, domineering and ingenious, Dennis is, in the words of his wife, 'an incarnation of evil with a briefcase.'With that assessment firmly in mind, let me ask you a question. How long can you hear Bagley's diatribes against consumer culture and human folly before you are attracted to him? If you breathe air, marketing works on you. Because is there not something proactive and self-aware about Dennis? Really? So don't you think you're influenced by the opinion of others? No chance of being hypnotised or attracted to sparkly ideas? Sure you aren't just a hybrid mass of other people?Maybe, then, you're a social retard or a sociopath. Which head looks uglier, I ask you? I know which one I'd rather invite to a dinner party.

This film is literally about "How to Get A HEAD in Advertising." Once a vigorous advertising agent in his field, able to sell anything to anyone, Denis Dimbleby Bagley (Richard E. Grant) has suddenly found himself working himself to death trying to come up with a sales pitch for pimple cream. His obsession with trying to conquer those bloody boils suddenly leads to an unexpected epiphany in which Denis, sick of how everything has become so relentlessly commercialized and every single value of life turned into a money making venture, decides to give up the advertising trade and wage a war on the commercialization of life. But, if there's one thing a revolutionary cannot do freely, it's stand in the way of profiteering. Denis faces a nemises, the one who wants him to keep on ruthlessly selling (and lying) to the world and stomp out the idealistic and possibly costly ambitions of the born again Denis Bagely. But it is no ordinary nemesis. It is a boil that grows on the his neck, an alter-ego that grew out of Denis's inability to sell everything (i.e. the pimple cream) and his newfound war against advertising. This boil comes to gain it's own personality, it's own voice, and even it's own appearance (it looks exactly like Denis). Everyone thinks that Denis is insane with his talks of a muttering boil on his neck which he engages in conversation with. The boil starts to grow a life of it's own, and even a head of it's own, seeking to stifle Denis before his epiphanies are carried to far, and people start thinking for themselves and so forth.It is certainly an off-the-wall dark comedy, but an absolutely hilarious one with a valid point about the incessant commercialization about nearly every aspect of life, and one person who recognizes what a load of bullocks it is and tries to rid himself of it as much as he can. The ending makes for a cool finale as boil head Denis is yapping like a proud general riding his horse around unconquered territory about the possibility of amassing the earth and selling the world bit like bit. He ideas so dangerous, yet he is unstoppable and out of control. It is one hilarious movie and certainly an inventive story.