Pretty Good

One of my all time favorites.

hyped garbage

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Normally I don't rate movies that I've only watched 15 minutes of, but I'm going to make an exception for this one, because it begins so remarkably badly that it is almost unimaginable that it could redeem itself. Written by and starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, who have done many wonderful things, this is such a total misfire that one can only stare in disbelief. The beginning feels very much like a bad burlesque sketch. The "humor" is very broad, with Dudley putting on a moronic accent and Cook playing Holmes with seemingly no clear idea of what his character is or how he wants to approach him. I'm just utterly perplexed that this movie was made, and feel everyone involved should hang their heads in shame.

Geeze, that last post was a bit harsh. I found this movie funny when I first saw it soon after release, and when I recently watched it with my three young daughters. I thought the pee pee scene was hilarious, and I enjoyed the homages to Moore's and Cook's other works. It's just fun. It's SUPPOSED to be just fun; not deep, not a cinema-graphic classic, but fun. If my kids can enjoy it now, 25+ years later, It can't be that bad,and it isn't. Find it, watch it with a drink or two in your gullet, and enjoy! Not everything has to be a great work of art, you know. We all need to stop being so pretentious with these critiques. You can enjoy Spartacus AND Evil Dead, The Maltese Falcon AND Ice Pirates, You can enjoy this movie too.

Looking at today's conveyor belt of mind-numbing remakes of old shows, idiot teen comedies and action fests that have great special effects but little else, it's easy to get very nostalgic about the 1970s. But the decade of Coppola, Scorcese, Altman, Malik, Bogdanovic etc produced its fair share of cow pats and what an 'Annis Mirablis' 1978 was for truly wretched cinema. Hot on the heals of 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' (with the Bee Gees), 'Carry on Emmanuelle' and 'Renaldo and Clara' (a Bob Dylan vehicle..don't ask), came this fetid attempt to satire Holmes and Watson. First off, it has to said that the Cook-Moore contribution to postwar British comedy is immeasurable and would probably fit in third place after the Pythons and Goons. But even the greats have their off days and Pete and Dud were well off when they agreed to let Paul Morrisey direct a comedy that manages to bungle every comic moment. The falsetto Welsh accent of Watson (Moore) and the stage Jewish accent of Holmes (Cook) simply irritate and a very strong cast is completely wasted. Why, for example, is Spike Milligan only afforded a 'fleeting appearance'? Others do their best with lamentable gags. The urinating dog of Denholm Elliot isn't funny, simply disgusting and Roy Kinnear's flasher could have been funny but simply falls flat. Morrisey doesn't know whether to be clever and satiric, akin to 'Life of Brian', or cheerfully bawdy like a Carry On movie. The result is a movie that's neither seaside postcard humour nor the anarchistic satire that Pete and Dud had presented so well a decade before. A truly washed out Kenneth Williams, fresh off 'Emmanuelle' (Jesus wept) is slotted in, his usual flared-nostril, bulgy eyed caricature demolishing the myth that he was a great actor trapped by the Carry Ons. Better artistes like Henry 'Arthur Sultan' Woolf and Prunella 'Sybil' Scales simply have walk ons. Meanwhile, the look of the movie is cheap and stagey while Moore's piano score is out of place in a comedy. Given that he and Cook were successfully belting out the punk humour of Derek and Clive at the same time, this dog can't be explained by the fact that Cook was by then alcoholic and depressed. Perhaps Morrisey was really Moriarty in disguise.

Following the rudimentary outline of Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes tale, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore concoct a feast of comical whimsy. Or so they would have sold this weak film to its producers. As it is, it is a threadbare piece of work all too briefly lightened with flashes of genius(I laughed out loud when Dud encounters his double in the post office). We have bits of Pete'n'Dud's earlier stage material (ie 'i've nothing against your right leg, and neither have you') which were much funnier (because they were much fresher) in their original versions. Newer material seemed thin and drawn out. The accents that Cook and Moore avail themselves of (Jewish and Welsh) are funny to begin with, but soon pall. Likewise, the piddling dog is hilarious but dragged on for so long that the viewer starts to become annoyed and forget that he ever found it amusing. The music is a major drag. Dudley is an accomplished pianist, but his soundtrack in the manner of an old silent film accompanist falls as flat as the rest of the film.