I love this movie so much

One of my all time favorites.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Rich actor Peter Sellers and ultra-rich Beatle Ringo Starr star in a movie about the corrosive effects of money. They play a rich father and son who go around bribing people to do dumb things, to prove that everyone has their price.Just as with the much better movie, "Bowfinger," where mega-stars Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy show how hard it is to make it in Hollywood, it's at first a bit difficult to see over the sheer weight of hypocrisy of an anti-money flick headlining the (in real life) money-grubbing Sellers and a member of the Beatles, who by 1969 had been rolling in the stuff.Once one gets over that, one can enjoy the sheer awfulness of the movie. Well, it's not so much a movie as a series of vignettes where famous actors (mostly familiar faces in insular England) show up to make fools of themselves. Laurence Harvey performs a strip-tease Hamlet. Sellers' old "Goon Show" buddy Spike Milligan eats a parking ticket.The vignettes purport to show to what extremes people will go for money. It's all scripted, of course, so they did not really bribe Laurence Harvey or a traffic warden. It's just Terry Southern and his writing partners (including bits by future Pythons John Cleese and Graham Chapman) As they make their point early on, the rest of the movie is, as a carpenter friend of mine would say, "pounding wood." That is, the nail is driven in all the way and the job is done, but they keep hammering holes in the woodwork all around it.The sheer smarminess of it all makes the movie worth watching, in the way some people rubberneck at road accidents to see if there are any dead bodies. But for normal people, unless you are really a hard-core Sellers fan, it's difficult sitting through this psychedelic 1960s period piece. All the neat new tricks they tried with colors and cinematography that were "mod" and "far out" in that (thankfully) bygone age are now look cheap, tawdry and distracting. It's like looking at yourself in your high school yearbook and wondering what you were thinking with that hair and those clothes.Nevertheless, Sellers acts his little heart out (while Ringo looks like he's doing his part for extra credit). Some of the stars do superlative little turns. John Cleese earns a few honest laughs as a man with a Rembrandt Sellers' character wants to buy -- but only its nose, not the rest of it. In an auction, Sellers hams it up but Patrick Cargill is hilarious as the straight-laced auctioneer.By the time THE MAGIC Christian (an odd name for a cruise ship) leaves port, the movie has deteriorated to flashes of nonsense, livened by moments of sublime lunacy (for instance, the always watchable Rachel Welch doing her fifteen seconds in the ship's engine room -- which is powered by topless women pulling oars.) Basically, "The Magic Christian" takes 92 minutes to reiterate what the Bible said in ten words, "the love of money is the root of all evil." Here, no one really does evil (though Christopher Lee's inexplicable vampire/steward may be up to no good). Nearly all that's done is merely stupid. Some of it still earns a few chuckles, but most of it has that dread aura of something that "seemed like a good idea at the time."

First off all, I'm a big fan of Peter Sellers, his acting and nearly all the films he have been in, because he isn't that kind of actor who have been in a billion of good movies, like Robert De Niro or Dustin Hoffman, but if we talk about all of his performances in the movies he have been in, good or bad, he have always done it in such a intelligent and funny way, you could say that he is better known for his characters, than the actual movie he have starred in.'The Magic Christian' is in many ways a very forgotten and misunderstood film, not many can understand its humor, because its very dark at times, but that is just what makes it so much more interesting, than other movies can ever get, in this kind of psychedelic movie genre. So if you ever plan to see this, only do it if you either are a fan of Sellers, or just if you have a good understanding in dark comedy. In many Sellers movies, it's always him that stands out the most, but this movie just have so much more to give, like good chemistry between the lead actors (Sellers and Ringo), a funky 60's rock soundtrack, interesting camera angles, totally weirdness all around (especially in the end scenes) and a great message, "That every human on earth, will do everything for a good amount of money" ... I think the message is partly true, because every human have a stretch for what they will do for money - like, I don't want to cut my own arm off, if I got $1000000 dollars, but if I got $100000000 dollars, I would probably think a little bit about it... and its just that, this movie makes you think, and thats one of the many reasons that this 60's flick is so enjoyable... and outrageously weird!

Subconsciously I have avoided this movie for about 20 years. One reason being, that I grew up with the Peter Sellers comedies, having watched most of them with my parents and having eventually discovered, that a lot of them don't age terribly well. The second reason was that, although Sellers has produced much, much quality work, he's at time delivered horrible performances.However, the other day I had a DVD copy from a friend-of-a-friend fall into my hands and around that same time I felt like watching something with Sir Christopher Lee – something I hadn't yet seen, mind you. The nearest and only thing in reach was that 'Magic Christian' DVD, so into the player it went.The first ten odd minutes made me sure that once again my suspicions were correct and that I was watching a Sellers movie that was both outdated and definitely in the weaker category. Inflated nonsense, pointless slapstick and random attempts at squeezing laughs out of a more innocent 1970's watcher, thought I while my index finger was nervously tapping the 'stop'-key.However, I kept on watching. And suddenly something made 'click' inside my head. I had found a gem, a diamond of a comedy and before Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr made it unto the Magic Christian, I was a believer and convinced that this film belongs right up there with Sellers greatest works.If you haven't seen Peter Sellers take his adventurous 5 course diner at a French restaurant, haven't experienced Yul Brunner singing "About the Boy" in drag to an inebriated Roman Polanski or a crowd of essential British citizens wading through a tank of urine and manure for paper money, then you haven't seen it all. And by the way: if you're a Christopher Lee and Dracula fan, you haven't seen it all either if you haven't seen Sir Christopher on board the Magic Christian.To those among the readers who have been put off from watching this by certain critiques of the time who gave the movie a finger or those who believe that the film is a random sequence of anarchic and even more random gags and sketches, please reconsider. Believe an old movie buff who says: this movie is a forgotten gem!

This film is some piece of work I will give it that. Seldom have I seen such a bizare movie. Somewhere I read that Vincent Price was supposed to make a cameo in this film. But unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your opinion on Vincent Price as well as The Magic Christian)he was unable. This was supposedly because filming on The Witchfinder General (or The Concoring Worm)went over schedule. So Price was unable to make a cameo appearance like Christopher Lee, Laurence Harvey and Yul Brynner. Has anyone else heard this story? And if you have heard it, where? I cannot find where I read that story. And I cannot recall where I read it. I don't think it was in the book by his daughter though. Thoughts?