Grade: B+ | Genre: Comedy Summary: Unfortunately, unless you know a bit about Steve Coogan and appreciate the realistic edginess of British wit, you could miss the laughs in this mockumentary about making a movie based on a novel that simply cannot be filmed.
Just to get this out of the way first, in case you do not know about one of England's funniest and most creative men, Steve Coogan, shame on you. Not only will this keep you from catching some of the jokes in this film, as some are based on his former TV character Alan Partridge, and one running gag is about a real-life tabloid headline that plagues Coogan, but you are missing really brilliant humor from a great comic actor. But enough of that, and onto the review of the movie, which is a film about making a film from a novel that is un-filmable. In fact no one in their right mind would attempt to make a movie about this particular novel. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a weighty novel written by Laurence Sterne that is one of those great books famous for being owned but seldom actually read. The book itself is a perfect vehicle for a movie about a novel that one simply cannot film, for this piece of literature is the fictional autobiography of an eccentric English gentlemen that have more digressions, narrative segues and utterly exhausting contrivances than any postmodern works that have ever been written. |