JohnHowardReid Deliciously off-beat characters interacting in some really standout scenes make "A Fine Madness" a really wonderfully must-see comedy. The movie boasts a terrific cast led by Sean Connery in one of his best roles, Joanne Woodward and Jean Seberg. Of course, a good cast and a whirlwind script rate for nothing if a sloppy or incompetent director is placed in charge – and I certainly had second thoughts when I saw the name, Irvin Kershner! His only previous movies – interspersed with a lot of TV work – were Stakeout on Dope Street, The Young Captives, A Face in the Rain and The Luck of Ginger Coffey. Not exactly what you would call an Academy Award list! But, to my great surprise, A Fine Madness is handled with verve and imagination. The magnificent photography contributed by Ted McCord must also be acknowledged. And so must the music score by John Addison. All told, the movie's brisk pace never falters, thanks to a brilliant script by Elliott Baker, based on his own novel of the same title. In short, Baker has successfully brought off a daring attempt to instill a real Dickensian flavor into both novel and movie script. But be warned! My view is not shared by other critics. Russell Carnell, for example, described the movie as "incredibly dreary" and "predictable".

Robert J. Maxwell I never thought I'd see a movie in which Sean Connery, master of ironic understatement, could be accused of overacting. But there's a scene here in which Connery has been paid two hundred dollars -- he's a blocked poet and down on his luck -- to read before some ladies' literary club. As he waits to be called to the speaker's platform, bored, angry that he's being forced by circumstances to be "a performer," he polishes off a bottle or two of champagne. He's hunched over at his table while a harpist precedes him on the stage. Getting drunker, he looks around at the women in the audience -- and he sneers and scowls and frowns with fulsome disgust. It's WAY too much. And, as if we were too dumb to understand, the director punctuates the scene with shots of the ladies in the audience -- fat, overdressed, smiling at the heavenly music, sleeping, snoring, abstracted, and ugly. (Except for Jean Seberg, who is not at all ugly.) The title comes from Michael Drayton, who in 1627, referring to playwright Christopher Marlowe, wrote: "For that fine madness still he did retain Which rightly should possess a poet's brain." But this movie has a lot less to do with poetry than with madness. If we didn't know Connery was a blocked poet, we'd just view him as a destructive and self-indulgent maniac. He hurls furniture at the walls and insults at strangers. He feels no remorse, no love, just anger. He takes a mean pleasure in revealing a psychiatrist's stolen notes to a pathetic patient.The whole movie is ill conceived and over directed. It substitutes speed and noise for effective comedy. Slapstick needn't be bad if there's some wit propelling it. "The Pink Panther" was full of pratfalls but was a successful comedy. Here, the intent seems to be to overwhelm the audience with a foot pursuit across the Brooklyn Bridge, the demands placed on a harried waitress in a clangorous delicatessen.There is a plot, actually, gossamer but discernible. Connery is really out of control. Should he get the Menken intraorbital leukotomy? It's a little reminiscent of "Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment." But that film was both funny and tragic, whereas this is neither.I can't tell whether or not Connery was asked to speak with a working-class New York accent or not. If he was, it was a mistake. Joanne Woodward, as his wife, does a little better with her acting and her accent. Jean Seberg is beautiful. A few more scenes of her running around in her skivvies would have helped. The production design is good, and there is a nice scene involving a plastic eye popping out of a plastic skull. The musical score is badly in need of a clinical dose of lithium carbonate. Open wide, please, the whole movie.

Andrew Goss Cute music, New York street scenes, lots of pace, some really good actors, an audacious plot, probably ahead of its time, some delightful vignettes, so what went wrong? Probably the fact that it is neither funny nor illuminating. There is humour, mostly visual, but this is outweighed by Shillitoe's wanton violence and abusiveness when thwarted. The film could not exist without Samson Shillitoe, no other set of characteristics would bring all those disparate plot and character elements together. You might say that Shillitoe is the creator of the story, indeed, of the little world that the film inhabits. As I watched, a memory began to surface, of the God Thor in Douglas Adams' novel "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul". That, with Shillitoe's obscure references to Apollo, and the failure of Menken's surgery, suggest that Shillitoe is not mortal, but a God of the classical era come amongst us on a whim, or perhaps in exile. Anyway, that's the only excuse I can think for for this shambles.

ONenslo This is the sort of movie that makes me ponder the whole time I'm watching it, "Who SHOULD have been in these roles?" Connery and Woodward really give it a good try, chewing big hunks out of the scenery, but they never convince, not for a moment. The role of earnest but ignorant and garrulous wife could have been played to perfection by Geraldine Page or, in an earlier and lighter version of the story, Judy Holliday. The role of Samson Shillitoe, deranged poet, could have been handled well by Jason Robards or Walter Matthau, and his mysterious attraction for women would have been more believable with the former, and more humorous with the latter.For me, the only real laughs came from the one short scene featuring pudgy businessman Sorrell Booke learning the facts about his wife's hysteria. "You'll ascertain MY virility????"I think they were trying for the kind of thing here where, like Alec Guiness's deranged artist character in "The Horse's Mouth," the obnoxious jerk has a mysteriously endearing charm or ability that shines through despite his appalling behaviour, but this poet isn't the horse's mouth. Quite the opposite.If you enjoy the type of film that leaves you shaking your head and wondering why, this is definitely for you.