Year: 1970
Director: Kevin Billington
I remember wanting to see this when it came out only for it never to show up at my local Odeon on its 1970 release (those were the days!) Nor can I ever recall seeing it show up on any of the then three TV channels in the years in the next decade or so when I had a TV (Kids today! Don’t know they’re born, etc!)
Finally did get to see it on one of those old movie channels about six years back and finally got around to buying my own copy and rewatching again a couple of weeks ago.
While a critical and commercial bomb on its release, the film remains little more than a historical curio best known for apparently destroying Peter Cook’s career as a major movie star. While Cook never found another leading role to match his huge talent thereafter, it’s hard to see him going to Hollywood and doing any better than – say – Marty Feldman, whose career crashed and burned a few years later.
One reason for the film’s failure is undoubtedly the fact that it’s more a series of inter-linked sketches than a real coherent narrative. Given the cast contains the cream of British comedy at that time– Cook, Cleese and Chapman to name but three – what else was it ever likely to be. That said, some of the sketches are very, very funny – the always wonderful Arthur Lowe as the hapless ad agency chief whose firm RImmer takes over on his way to the top is always good value. (What’s that For Sale sign doing on the car?” says his wife.”Oh that! That’s an ad for Fors Ale, some new beer that Rimmer has us pushing!” replies Lowe. Others are rather more clunky – the laboured sub-plot involving the dependably sleazy Denholm Elliot’s chasing of RImmer’s trophy missus.
Kitty Muggeridge once dismissed David Frost (who produces here) as being “a man who rose without trace” – rather like Rimmer himself. Despite its occasional clunkiness, what makes the film worth watching today, is how similar Rimmer is to the likes of Tony Blair, Dominic Cummings and PM in the wings, “Dishy” Rishi Sunak. While the film has dated rather badly as only British comedies from the early 1970s can, there are also some terrific jokes – as you’d expect from Cook et. This exchange when TV interviewer, Steven Hench, interviews a senior minister about the death of a rival is one of the best. Given that senior pols come out with the most appalling gubbins when an enemy carks it to this day, it’s also one of the most timeless:
Steven Hench: Mr Blocket, you had been on rather acrimonious terms with the late Prime Minister
Blocket: We had our differences
Steven Hench: On one occasion, indeed on several occasions, you described him as a two-faced weasel-eyed git.
Blocket: In the rough and tumble of parliamentary debate things are said that can often be misinterpreted but there was a lot of warmth there.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
The Thick of It, Not Only But Also, The Frost Report, Yes Minister
Gatz says
Funnily enough this was among a huge pile I sent to the charity shop bins last week when I had a huge clear out (I had a new carpet fitted and resolved not to allow piles of books, CDs, DVDs to accumulate on the floor because the shelves were full). I got it in a three pack of older British comedy film from The Works. I remember enjoying it when I got the set, having never heard of it before, but not wanting to hold on to it for repeated viewing. I di keep the DVD of Sir Henry at Rawlinson End from the same set though.
count jim moriarty says
Not sure Peter Cook ever had a career as ‘a major movie star’. Yes, he made a few films, but major star? Not really.
What he was, was one of the all-time great comic geniuses.
Jaygee says
Sorry meant to type “chances of becoming a major movie star” – he certainly had the looks and the comic chops.
Mike_H says
He had the looks and the comic chops, but he was rather stiff and uncomfortable-looking when not doing the comic stuff, I thought.
Not a Natural as an actor, like Dudley Moore proved to be.
Slug says
The Steven Hench character was played by Harold Pinter, no less. Fun fact 2: Peter Cook’s character, as he rises to the top, becomes the Member of Parliament for the rural constituency of ‘Budleigh Moor’.
I bow to no man in my admiration of Peter Cook, but it has to be said that TRAROMR is a wee bit of a disappointment. Of course it has dated, that is inevitable for any satire, but it feels like a bunch of sketches held together by a tenuous, undeveloped plot. Perhaps I was expecting too much, because I found it actually quite serious and a bit po-faced, rather than laugh out loud funny. It is very much more of a political satire than it is a comedy, but the passage of history has almost turned it into a political documentary. Prescient, certainly.
deramdaze says
Comedy of any era would be better if it wasn’t left to Oxbridge.
Anything would be better if it wasn’t left to Oxbridge.
Pete and Dud are an exception, but the repeats on BBC Four Extra of Round the Horne beat the Python/Goodies stuff hands down.
“I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again” sounds like it’s from the mid-1860s, not the mid-60s.
Slug says
(smartass interjection) Actually, Kenneth Horne was at Cambridge. Admittedly, he was sent down from Magdalene in his second year for ‘ignoring his studies’.
Black Celebration says
I love Angus Deayton’s answer to the accusation that coming through Oxbridge was a massive advantage. It’s a clear and unequivocal “yes” from him. I have heard others say that talent always shines through but going through Oxford or.Cambridge helps hugely when seeking a commission from the. BBC.
I completely adore everything Python but it was their university connections that got them their initial BBC work. This is very clear in Steven Fry’s first autobiography. After a period of time in borstal it ends with his story of how he convinced the powers that be to let him sit the entrance exams for Cambridge. It is clear from his tone that this was his passageway to the career he was after. Without that, he would have not succeeded.
mikethep says
Yes – when my son went to Cambridge I hoped either that he would be recruited by MI5/6 or rise to stardom via the Footlights. Neither happened. Or so he says…