The Worst Film Ever

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I saw this once, over ten years ago, and it has become one of my favorite films ever. It's hilarious and always takes an unexpected turn just when you'd think an ordinary movie would get boring. You can expect some majorly hilarious kink; the "gentlemen" do a great job of acting like VIPs in British society, and while some might take offence/offense at the stereotyping going on, just remember that this is (sorta) based on a woman's real-life experiences. This has an extra special connotation of you're an entrepreneur, because the movie's theme bears a strong metaphorical relationship to the life of anyone who is/has ever been in business for themselves and has had to do "all kinds of things" in order to survive the toughness of satisfying your "market". Heh heh. I highly recommend it!

Often it is said that you can define a country by the way it deals with that thorny business known as sex. Personal Services is as English as it gets about sex. Based very loosely on the life of English madam Cynthia Payne, Personal Services takes the character of Cynthia Painter and follows her progress from London waitress to a brothel keeper or 'Madam'.It starts with an accident. Madam is renting out flats but her clients (particularly one) don't pay her rent so she has to pay her landlord in a different way, by offering him sexual favours. Pretty soon, she starts to do this on a regular basis. Usually her clients are old men or men with a particular 'kink' such as wearing rubber and being locked in a cupboard with only a panic button for company. Others prefer being treated like naughty school boys and being spanked by matron or mistress. All this is done in the only way it can be done, the English style, accompanied by ribald comments about male anatomy, cups of tea, transvestites called 'Dolly' and, of course, the law, the police and eventually the crown court judge (who happens to be a Painter client).It is Belle De Jour without Catherine Deneuvre and with a lot more fun and more honesty. And of course, loads of tea and biscuits.

beautifully acted, unexpectedly moving, hilarious, and at times very, very dirty, this film is "inspired by" the life of cynthia payne, one of the most notorious madame's in britain's history - julie walters is brilliant as a woman who evolves from a waitress struggling to make her rent, to a successful businesswoman running a brothel that caters only to "kinky sorts" - through all of it, she raises a son, forces her father to come to terms with the person his daughter has become, and has difficulty with the "charles and diana" ideal of love that she can never find for herself - perhaps the greatest quality of this film, though, is its ability to shock at every turn - just when you thought you'd seen just how honestly funny kinky sex can be, think again...

This film has a preface that it is fiction, and though the writer David Leland was inspired by a book by Cynthia Payne - the infamous British Madam - this is not the story of Cynthia Payne. The disclaimer is repeated at the end, and then we see that the production consultant was Cynthia Payne. Perhaps there was a legal necessity for Madam Payne and the film-makers to provide this escape clause, since the film's madam, named Christine Painter, was charged with possessing obscene material for gain and running a brothel. What makes this madam's brothel different is that Christine's clientele is gentlemen over 40 with a taste for kink, though the bondage and discipline we see is very mild. You would have to be extremely prudish to be offended by such behaviour. What makes these scenes so funny is how ordinary the customers are, which only reinforces the hypocrisy of the laws that consider prostitution a crime, and the insight the "tarts" have into men's sexuality. I loved the line "When the balls are full, the brain is empty", and the madam's argument that wives would never be wanting for anything as long as they kept their men "de-spunked". As Christine, Julie Walters delivers a brilliant comic performance. She is a no-nonsense uppity woman, constantly in motion, who has never cared for sex but enters into the business for economic reasons. The ads posted in a shop window are deliberately double entendre-d eg large chest for sale, french polishing available. Walters looks surprising voluptuous here though as she becomes more successful she starts to resemble a drag queen. When she attends her sister's wedding, there is a confrontation scene with her father, and we see what a fool he is for not appreciating her. Director Terry Jones came from the Monty Python group but it is to his credit that the humor is not juvenile or in poor taste. Walters does have an odd scene where she is suddenly in an exotic location and spying on a couple having sex, another where a revolving camera glorifies her romantic fantasies, and the circumstances of a missed "normal" date hint at that old chestnut that whores are doomed to die lonely. But overall the tone is light and positive. Special mention is made of Shirley Stelfox as the stern "Nanny", and Danny Schiller as the maid with an undetermined sex.