Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

dougmcnair This movie is sometimes brilliant, sometimes silly, sometimes surreal, sometimes tragic, sometimes wickedly satirical, and always schizophrenic (which is the whole point). It's also the only film in which Jesus Christ does the Varsity Drag. Peter O'Toole plays the paranoid schizophrenic heir to an English earldom, and as his relatives try to either cure him or commit him, what we think is being played for laughs slowly becomes something far darker.O'Toole's performance is brilliant, bringing out this man's almost unbearable pain as he tries to hold his mind together by escaping into whatever fantasy world he can manage. Unfortunately, escaping into a world where he is God and everyone loves each other does not work for society, so his family has to snap him out of that so he can become acceptable. At its core, the film is about what kind of insanity (and what kind of god) is acceptable in upper-class British society, and it makes its points on that score very well. But unfortunately, it's far too long; there are so many supporting characters with their own subplots that it gets bogged down in many places. But if you can last through the slow parts, you'll be rewarded with some unforgettable scenes before the end. Seven stars.

SHAWFAN Despite this film's age (38 years and counting) when I saw it last night this was the first time I had ever seen it. I immediately added it to my list of the greatest movies of all time. Its mixtures of genres while highly unusual are not unrepresented elsewhere: Dr. Strangelove, Monty Python, Rocky Horror, etc., would seem to fill in its category with other examples of the combination of social satire, psychological horror, off-the-wall musical numbers, etc.But what really makes this film so special is of course Peter O'Toole himself. This has to be his greatest role as an actor and would have been the same for any other actor who might have succeeded in bringing it off so brilliantly as O'Toole did. Could anyone else have done it? Peter Sellers? Richard Burton? Laurence Olivier? Perhaps the latter had O'Toole's versatility to be able to go from one bizarre attitude to another without incongruity or the slightest skip of a beat. But I don't think Olivier was ever offered such a marvelous actor's showoff role as this.But among the fifty or so critiques of this incomparable, stunning, and never-to-be-forgotten film which I read on your site, none referred to the very possible antecedent to Peter Barnes' play and movie, the celebrated Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello's play Henry IV, which also posited an insane monarch imagining himself to be a character out of history and the attempts of the monarch's relatives to cope with the situation.

spanishflea50 Firstly I would like to say that i adore the way almost every aspect of this film. It is extremely witty (witness the oft quoted line from O'Toole about why he thinks he is God) and also very touching (Jack's joy when he marries his wife for example) and it's songs are great and very nicely integrated. The one area where I think it fails is as a satire against the ruling classes. The idea that the aristocracy is uncomfortable with non comformity or uncontrolled emotion is neither original nor reserved solely for that strata of society. This does not mean that the film lacks depth however and I found myself extremely troubled by the film's observation that the world is more tolerant of excessive coldness than excessive love. At times I feel that the film could work as a parable to the release of Barrabas and the crucifixtion of Christ. Perhaps this is to read too much into it but I urge everyone to watch the film and ponder it for themselves.

george karpouzas I have heard about this film from one of my teachers in high school and when I saw it yesterday in a video club I immediately recognized it, since I remembered that the protagonist thought of himself as Jesus. Peter O' Toole is so good in this movie that he made me think the unthinkable, that Lawrence of Arabia is not his best role ever. This movie is black comedy,musical, farce, political satire , parable all in one. It has some terrific moments as the one where the hero and the representative who came to see whether he is insane or not, sing together the Eton boat song-I remembered Churchill in Great Contemporaries who wrote of a British political personage who died singing the Eton or Harrow boat song- I can not recollect this detail. Anyhow for someone who has an idea of British class conventions derived from reading, papers and films as opposed from actual experience this movie is a rare treat.The scene where the House of Lords is presented as a house full of corpses and skeletons through the eyes of the protagonist is a haunting scene, not at all comic, although it is ironic.The scene with the two Gods in a room is also brilliant.I wonder if the Tatler for example could present such a character for an interview, when it presents representative samples of British socialites.I think that someone must be very sure of his strength in order to produce so savage satire and criticism. I wonder if we could see equally successful representations of American WASPS or French Enarques.This movie has everything and I can not classify it. I also have not seen or read the play which I am going to buy in order to form an impression although a written text is not the same as a live performance.Still a society that produces such self-criticism must be very sure of itself.