Too much of everything

Please don't spend money on this.

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy was published in the mid 1750s and can be described as post modern before the term was invented. Its a ramble and regarded as unfilmable.Enter Frank Cotterell Boyce and Michael Winterbottom assisted by Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan who adapt the book as a film within a film of the book.Anyone familiar with the BBC series The Trip also directed by Winterbottom and starring Brydon and Coogan as versions of themselves will be familiar with the set up. The both tease, spar, cajole each other and do impressions.You have scenes relating to the birth of Tristram Shandy and some of its comical and amusing, you have a battle scene with literally tens of people and suddenly the filmmakers manage to get Gillian Anderson on board as Widow Wadnam which leads to an increased budgetAs the film goes on, Coogan's personal life comes under scrutiny with a newspaper hack chasing him about a kiss and tell story, Madchester TV stalwart and music mogul Tony Wilson appears as himself giving a testy interview to Coogan and the Stephen Fry drops by as a know it all.Of course by the latter end the film just fizzles out, as if the actual writer and director ran out of gas and this viewer lost interest. Maybe there was a good reason why the novel was unfilmable.

I had never heard of the novel that this was based on.The director Micheal Winterbottom has done a few decent films.This is not one of them.There were a few humorous moments BUT enough of themI am not a Television watcher, so I am unfamiliar with Steve Coogan.Let me be kind & say I will not go out of my way to watch any other film he was in.I also was confused many times in watching this, as I was not sure what was happening.This had a short run on a few screens in 2006. To those who missed it, you did not miss anything.Ratings: ** (out of 4) 64 points (out of 100) IMDb 5 (out of 10)

A movie about the making of a movie and the movie in question is "Tristram Shandy", the novel they said was unfilmable and which isn't filmed here. It begins like a deconstruction of the novel in filmic terms, part Tony Richardson's "Tom Jones" and part Karel Reisz's version of "The French Lieutenant's Woman" but it soon abandons that approach in favour of a reasonably straightforward account of the film-making process in which the two stars of the film within the film, Steven Coogan and Rob Brydon, play themselves or rather are acting 'characters' called Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon since this is fiction and not a documentary. It is never as funny or as 'post-modern' as it thinks it is and somehow it is the 'Tristram Shandy' sequences which come off best. Still, it is as idiosyncratic as anything Michael Winterbottom has done, self-indulgent and bold at the same time. It will do until someone actually films "Tristram Shandy".

This film is dire, self-satisfied, pretentious and - more importantly -dull. A 90 minute examination of Steve Coogan's (fictionalized?) ego is only clever and postmodern if you happen to be Steve Coogan or a member of his immediate family. Is he a bigger star than Rob Brydon? Will he cheat on his wife with the pretty assistant? I don't care and neither should you. The only question I am interested in is why Michael Winterbottom saw fit to touch this steaming pile of smug middle class turd when he could have been making another film with a point and a social conscience, qualities with which he is more usually associated. Shame on you Michael, you let your famous friends turn your head.