Leofwine_draca
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.
Gregory Anderson
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.
movieman_kev
Richard E. Grant is Dennis Bagley, an advertising executive who goes mad when he finds a boil growing on his neck that begins to talk to him. Basically a socialist manifesto that doesn't beat you upside the head with propaganda... UNTIL the last half hour or so. (As opposed to PURE propaganda such as "John Q", or to a lesser extant, "American Beauty") But when it DOES, boy does it ever. At one point in the film a taped Denis Bagley actually equates the Holocaust with eating meat. PETA would LOVE this film, just for that insane tripe on it's own. The sad thing is before all this socialistic BS, it actually was an OK film. This gets a passing grade, if just barely. However it IS a million times better then another "growing appendix" movie, "The Dark Backwards" (which is out and out HORRID!)My Grade: D
outsider-2
Its a brave, scathingly funny film that might be an acquired taste. This one definitely needs a memorable quotes section!! For a film made so long ago, its quite an accurate and eerie depiction of what the PR industry has mutated into...
AD
