Maziun I've read quite many negative reviews abort his movie . After finally watching it I have to say – it's not bad . It's far from being a great movie , but "The man who knew too little" is kinda worth rental .As the title suggest it's a parody of Hitchcock's "The man who knew too much". Also it's a parody of Bond movies (or any spy movie). The idea is simple – the main hero thinks it's all a game , while everything is real. It makes the movie a basically one joke comedy – all the characters are wrong about each other actions and motivations. Most of the jokes fall flat.The thing that makes "TMWKTL" watchable is the acting . Bill Murray is charming and charismatic as ever . He's very funny , when he's pretending to be Dirty Harry . Alfred Molina who plays the villain Boris The Butcher is also a joy to watch . Add to that lovely Joanne Whaley as sexy spy Lorrie and funny Peter Gallagher as James Ritchie -brother of main hero.Overall it's nothing great , but it's a fun fluffy entertainment worth watching once . I give it 5/10.

david-sarkies When I first heard of this movie I was intrigued by the title - it, in my own weird way, thought it was clever. It looked cute, and a few friends said that it was funny, so I could not resist watching it. One complaint though is that the video cover is not as good as the movie poster, where they had Bill Murry pointing an oversized gun out at you.The movie is about a naive man, Wallace Ritchie, who comes to London to surprise his brother, but must be occupied for the night as his brother has an important dinner. So his brother enrolls him in something called the theatre of life, where the audience participates in the action. Unfortunately Wallace picks up the wrong phone call and gets caught up in a cloak and dagger mission, which he believes is all acting.The comedy from this movie comes from two areas: in one way it is slap-stick, but the real thrust of the comedy is the fact the people do not know something, yet assume that they do. They do not know who Wallace is and think that he is a dangerous spy, yet he is just an ordinary guy. What adds to it is that Wallace was mugged at the beginning so he has no identification, yet they think even more that he is a spy. What is even funnier is that Wallace thinks he is simply in an interactive theatre, and treats it as such. While all of this seriousness goes on around him, he seems to be having the time of his life. Even more, Ritchie's clumsiness gets him out of a lot of predicaments and makes the bad guys think even more that he is a dangerous spy.I really enjoyed this movie. Most comedies I do not find funny, but once in a while one comes out that is quite funny (though some are simply pure hilarity, such as Analyse This!). This is a humorous (though not outrageously funny) comedy.

Robert J. Maxwell Peter Gallagher is an ambitious businessman in London, trying to put together a big international deal to market his product. He invites his goofy brother, Murray, over as a guest and tells him he'll be taking part in "The Theater of Life," which will consist of a series of auditions and improvised incidents that may lead to a part in a play. Something like that. It's like Michael Douglas' "The Game" turned inside out.This is a fantasy, built around a single joke -- Murray's belief that it's all part of a game. He continues to believe it throughout the movie, even to the end. The first inopportune occurrences are minor ones. Two British thugs attempt to rob him at knife point. Murray responds by chuckling and complimenting them on their ability to really get into the role.Then he's swept up coincidentally into a plot by British and Russian agents who long for the good old days of the Cold War, when all the spies were busy and the phones rang all the time. They plan to assassinate the Russian and British leaders who are about to sign a Friendship Pact. Murray is misidentified as a secret agent assigned to stop them. The contretemps pile up, one upon the other, and Murray blindly stumbles through it all. If a pistol appears, he's likely to say something like, "Uh-oh, a sign of realism, eh? Very impressive. No, really." The caricature of reality resembles that of Peter Sellers' "Being There," the story of an almost infinitely stupid ex-gardener who only knows what he's seen on television but is taken to be a Deep Thinker and winds up being considered for nomination for the President of the United States."Being There" had its silly moments but was funnier because the lines were better and because it carried a certain sting with it. How stupid can you be before you are recognized as less than presidential material? Here, the jokes involve much more slapstick and the misguided premise itself is sort of worn out by the end. Murray winds up at a big party, dressed as a Russian dancer, jiggling a live bomb. The writers kept forging ahead although the story was going nowhere. Not that it doesn't have its share of laughs.I'm not sure the writers realized it but they've introduced a kind of psychological approach to therapy based on the "life as theater" model. There's no place to get into role playing. Anyone interested should Google Milton Erikson. I'll give an example of how taken-for-granted the scrips that we live are. It's a real example. A Los Angeles police officer pulled over a driver for a minor violation. The driver was African-American and it was a black neighborhood. As the cop examined the driver's credentials and busied himself with writing a ticket, a crowd gathered, slowly growing angrier at yet more police harassment of blacks. Soon the lone cop was surrounded by a muttering mob and the threat of violence hung in the air. The script at this point called for the cop to unclip his revolver and order the crowd to disperse. Instead, he turned and waved a copy of the traffic ticket above his head, shouting, "You have just witnessed an exercise of law enforcement in the city of Los Angeles!" While the crowd puzzled over this announcement ("What did he say?"), the officer got into his car and drove quietly away.Neither Murray nor anyone else knew quite was they were tapping into when they casually threw around terms like "Living Theater" and "Life as Theater." It really IS, in many ways. For more of THAT, read Kenneth Burke or Erving Goffman.

elshikh4 This is one enjoyable comedy for sure. "A" for that script. It managed to create a long chain of nice misunderstandings, including the many double-meaning words. And I liked intensifying all the hot events in about 2 hours of one night.The thing about the anti-James Bond is that he represents us; all the clumsy wanna-be heroes out there. So when the movie celebrates his always accidental victory, winning the respect and the fear from everybody, we feel so relieved, turning into heroes ourselves, since one of us DID IT, and purely by his / our clumsiness, to leave the movie a bit proud of our low capacities and sheer innocence, believing – even if spuriously – that someday we'll save the world as much as god is on our side, and some scriptwriters as well ! However, the script forgot to explain what the fact around the woman / the minster's mistress was ? What the need for those letters could be ? And I thought the relationship between the lead and his brother could have been rooted better, to present some kind of a meaning at last, concerning the importance of being careless and adventurous more than uptight and narrow-minded.Speaking about "careless" pushes immediately to (Bill Murray). I love such a guy. He plays everything with a trademark sweet coolness. Look at him fooling around as a Russian dancer who, by his axiomatic fun, excels the rest of the serious authentic dancers. No one I remember can do such a scene with a serene lovely sense but (Murray). He's the easygoing friend that everybody wishes for. So, another "A" for the lead actor. The minor parts weren't done as good. I mean (Peter Gallagher) as the brother ?! Where was (Jon Lovitz) for god's sake ? Then (Joanne Whalley) ?? She's totally miscast. I don't know how they didn't come up with any funny, any sexy other actress ?! It's only (Alfred Molina) who was great as the professional "butcher"; with the double meaning of the word !The movie suffers from a small size budget. With another sum of money this should have been more powerful and dazzling. And (Jon Amiel)'s direction didn't help much mastering a powerful and dazzling image in the first place. Well, this is a kind of James Bond spoof, so be at least a bit big or colorful instead of looking like something shot in a very tight rooms ! This is dazzling at heart movie. Because outwardly it's near to poor TV. But anyway, with that script and that lead, not much can go wrong.