mpan-65792 Hands down without an other flick coming in 2nd place. I will strive to have either disks or downloads freely available (whatever is the predominant format at such time} for any attendee who is twisted enough to want to see what it was that inspired and sustained me.

alguna-rubia I've been thinking about this movie a lot lately because people keep bringing up Idiocracy, and that movie left a similar bad taste in my mouth. Parts of this movie are funny. Parts of this movie are even probably realistic. But a bunch of white guys who made a ton of money in the entertainment business are not the right people to be making fun of normal people for doing crazy stuff for money. This movie is a pretty obvious case of punching down. It's kind of okay when they're making fun of the rich people, but the random people they victimize in the movie... it's basically making fun of poor people for being willing to do really degrading stuff to get money they may very well need. The movie never seems to consider that maybe people need 20 quid to buy fever-reducing meds for themselves, or new shoes for their growing child, etc. It's just "Ha ha, people are so greedy that they'll do anything for money!" Desperate people don't do crazy things for money just because they like having money- usually they actually need that money. The whole movie has this attitude that most people are stupid and horrible, and it's personally hard for me to laugh when it's clear that the makers lacked empathy. What's more, it seems pretty obvious that a guy who gives his money to people for doing terrible things instead of the obvious thing, which is giving to actual charities, is a terrible person, but we're supposed to root for him. I hated this movie.

fiftychance I could write pages and pages about it, but what it boils down to is that it's a mess.Half baked ideas are wedged in awkwardly everywhere, the sound mix is terrible in the current DVD release, the first 20 minutes seem to be devoted to selling the soundtrack (which only a die-hard Beatles fan could love) and whatever influence the Pythons had is completely phoned in- none of their characteristic brilliance can be found in this film.Maybe this seemed brilliant in the late 60s, but if you look at this film with eyes not clouded by nostalgia (or bloodshot), it comes up very short on redeeming features and very long on poor choices in direction, writing and sound design. Good comedy can overcome such failings; it's a great pity there's hardly any to be found in this film.The best I can say is that it's technically watchable, if you have literally nothing else to watch.

Ali Catterall There was nothing subtle about the 1960s, and so it is with its cinema satire. The Magic Christian, adapted from the novel by Terry Southern and relocated from America to Britain is engagingly goofy at best, a clunkingly pretentious muddle at worst. The tagline does rather give the game away: "The Magic Christian is antiestablishmentarian, antibellum, antitrust, antiseptic, antibiotic, antisocial & antipasto." It's the sort of desperately whacky stuff you can imagine Goldie Hawn blurting out on 'Rowan And Martin's Laugh-In'.Sellers, in half-hearted Grytpype-Thynne mode, plays eccentric Sir Guy Grand KG, KC, CBE, who bumps into homeless bum Youngman (Starr) feeding the ducks in Hyde Park. The childless millionaire adopts him as an heir and enlists him in the family business. His business, very simply, is to determine whether anybody, regardless of position or authority, will literally do anything, however degrading, for hard cash - so exposing the hypocrisy of the British class system and the fragility of its sacred cows, while subverting received notions of morality and societal hierarchies. Ken Kesey and his pranksters did it with their acid tests, the Black Panthers by asserting their constitutional right to bear arms - the Grands by scattering banknotes into a huge vat of liquid effluence and inviting bowler hated city gents to dive in. "A bit literal, I suppose," observes Ringo, putting his finger on the very thing that makes this satire so grating.As with Southern's other novel-to-film adaptation Candy from 1968, it's essentially a series of picaresque vignettes linked around a central theme, featuring a bulging cast of comic actors and a screenplay betraying the presence of its additional 'materialists' John Cleese and Graham Chapman. Many of these scenarios do resemble unfinished Monty Python sketches, and the Python's "mouse problem" almost made the finished cut before being rejected by Sellers. Among other outrages, we see Laurence Harvey persuaded to strip during a performance of Hamlet's soliloquy; the Oxbridge Boat Race transformed into a sea battle; and the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship descend into chaos after the opponents start making out; as Harry Carpenter notes, the audience is "sickened by the absence of blood". The funniest moments include the introduction of an African panther into Crufts, who graphically chows down on the smaller, fluffier contestants (pure Chapman there); Cleese's stuffy Sotheby's man reduced to a quivering wreck after Sellers mutilates a priceless Rembrandt (having paid for it first, of course); and Spike Milligan's traffic warden bribed to eat his own parking ticket. "You needn't eat the plastic" soothes Sellers, as Milligan gulps the whole lot down. "I'm here every Thursday", calls Milligan after their retreating motor. "Let that be a lesson to you!"As with other British films from this period (Bedazzled, Work Is A Four Letter Word) The Magic Christian trades in a peculiarly English surrealism - where Lewis Carroll meets Thomas De Quincy and Jonathan Swift - exemplified by a near-incoherent third act set aboard a phoney cruise ship called The Magic Christian. It's here that the film descends into the kind of groovy psychedelic antics which might have had hippies giggling in the aisles, but haven't dated at all well. Ironically, for such a counter-culture icon, Southern's original novel (which was banned for a stretch under obscenity laws) doesn't feature these kind of freak-outs. Even so, there's fun to be had here too, such as the bizarre vision of Yul Brynner's drag queen coming on to a panicky Roman Polanski, and Raquel Welch's 'Priestess Of The Whip' presiding over a galley of topless slavegirls.Yet aside from these glorious (and largely uncredited cameos), few of the cast and crew emerge from this with much dignity. It's one of Sellers' least arresting roles - and probably one of Ringo's best, though admittedly he doesn't have to do very much except provide a laconic foil. Joe McGrath, who'd previously directed Pete and Dud's 'Not Only... But Also', along with Casino Royale and 30 Is A Dangerous Age, Cynthia, seems powerless to mould a decent film out of such wildly uneven material. To further sour the mix, Pete Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger, who perform the film's theme song, the Paul McCartney-penned 'Come And Get It' both committed suicide some years later.