Category: Comedy

Asteroid City (2023)

Anderson’s quirk filled film is a triumph of his own style but lacks the depth of his best work

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Jason Schwartzman (Augie Steenbeck/Jones Hall), Scarlett Johansson (Midge Campbell/Mercedes Ford), Tom Hanks (Stanley Zak), Jeffrey Wright (General Gibson), Tilda Swinton (Dr. Hickenlooper), Bryan Cranston (Host), Edward Norton (Conrad Earp), Adrien Brody (Schubert Green), Liev Schreiber (J.J. Kellogg), Hope Davis (Sandy Borden), Stephen Park (Roger Cho), Rupert Friend (Montana), Maya Hawke (June Douglas), Steve Carell (Motel manager), Matt Dillon (Mechanic), Hong Chau (Polly), Willem Dafoe (Saltzburg Keitel), Jake Ryan (Woodrow), Grace Edwards (Dinah), Aristou Meehan (Clifford), Sophia Lillis (Shelly), Ethan Josh Lee (Ricky)

Every time I go and see a Wes Anderson film, I hope I might fall in love again. Eventually, I’ll find something in Anderson’s overly distinctive, quirky style that I love as much as The Grand Budapest Hotel. Maybe the romantic in me is dying, because I think its never going to happen. Certainly it doesn’t with Asteroid City a film I sat watching thinking “I know some people will love this more than life itself, but for me sitting here it feels like waiting for the rapture”.

Asteroid City is another of Anderson’s films that’s an intricate puzzle box where the pieces shift like the brightly coloured squares on a Rubrik’s cube. It’s filtered through several layers of remove: we watch a 50s TV announcer (Bryan Cranston) introduce a stage performance of a playwright’s (Edward Norton) long-running play that is itself an entrée to a wide-screen, technicolour production of a host of eccentrics, including a recently widowed photographer (Jason Schwartzman), his grouchy father-in-law (Tom Hanks), a glamourous Hollywood star (Scarlett Johansson) and several others accompanying their kids to a remote town in the desert for a young stargazing and science competition co-sponsored by an army general (Jeffrey Wright), when the whole town is thrown into quarantine after a stop-motion alien drops in, looks around and flies off.

Somewhere in Asteroid City there is an interesting, slightly sad, meditation on grief, loss and ennui struggling to get out. The alien arrival makes everyone question the nature of the universe and their place in it. It’s easy to see the influence of Covid on a town flung into quarantine, and the resulting state of uncertainty throwing everyone off kilter. We are following a man who has recently lost his wife, being played in this film-within-a-play-within-a-TV-show by an actor who was (we discover) recently lost his own partner. At one point this actor asks the director if he is ‘doing it right’, if he is getting the emotion or the author’s intention: “just tell the story” the director (Adrien Brody) responds. I think that’s part of a message about just live and let the big questions take care of themselves, of trusting that we can do our loved ones proud. That’s an interesting, rewarding point.

But it’s lost in Anderson’s pitiless device, his never-ending quirk and the deliberately distancing, artificial nature of his world and the monotonous, arch delivery his script, camera work and editing imposes on a series of actors. What this film desperately misses is a leading player with the strength and independence of a Ralph Fiennes or a Gene Hackman: someone who can bring depth and a sense of reality to the stylised Anderson world, while still delivering something perfectly in keeping with his tone. To put it bluntly, Schwartzman is, to put it bluntly, not a sufficiently engaging or interesting actor to communicate his character’s inner turmoil under the surface which the film’s inner meaning requires. He too naturally, and trustingly, settles into the Anderson rhythm.

In this crucial role, he’s a misfire. With our leading player too much of an artificial character, someone we never believe is anything other than a construct of the film’s author, inhabited by a collaborator who doesn’t bring the independence or new vision the director needs, the more the deeper emotional layers of the film are drowned. Instead, the film becomes a crushing onslaught of style and trickery, devoid of any sense of reality at any point.

It eventually makes the film feel overly smug, too pleased with-itself, too taken with its intricate, tricksy construction. It is of course a triumph of art design and the photography is gorgeous, from the black-and-white of the TV studio and theatre, to the 60s tinged, artificial world of Asteroid City, crammed with its obviously fake skylines and vistas and technicolour inspired feel. That at least its impossible not to admire. But it’s also a mighty artificial trap that enfolds the entire film – and eventually the audience – in a world of weightless, arch, eyebrow-cocked commentary that promises a lot but winds up saying almost nothing of any interest.

There are performances to admire. Scarlett Johansson is very droll and finds some depths as an star actress struggling with a concealed depression. Tom Hanks looks most like the actor who feels like he can break out of the Anderson mould and discover some genuine emotion. Jeffrey Wright demonstrates few actors can do Anderson dialogue better than him, Bryan Cranston very droll and perfectly observed as Ed Murrow style TV man and Adrien Brody is loose, fun and inventive as the play’s director. But yet its everything inside this framework that feels somehow empty.

What I want from Anderson is someone to come in and shake him up, to point out that he is not betraying his aesthetics or style by injecting a small dose of reality and humanity into it. When he has done that in the past – moments in Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and, above all, The Grand Budapest Hotel – he has delivered movies that are inventive, fun and playful but also carry real, lasting emotional impact. When he delivers in-jokes like Asteroid City, it feels like a party you have been invited to where everyone speaks in some made-up language they’ve not told you about in advance. And after not very long, all you want to do is to get up and leave.

Go West (1925)

Keaton meets his finest leading lady – a cow – in this adorably charming comedy

Director: Buster Keaton

Cast: Buster Keaton (Friendless), Howard Truesdale (Ranch owner), Kathleen Myers (Ranch owner’s daughter), Ray Thompson (Ranch foreman)

Keaton had been unconvinced by Seven Chances, the theatrical farce he’d been asked to film that saw him chased left, right and centre by women. Perhaps his reaction to playing a somewhat cold man pursuing and pursued by ladies persuaded him to try something completely different. What if he could make a film where he removed the “romantic” girl from the equation altogether? Could Keaton make an affecting comedy where his character’s strongest bond is to a cow?

Go West is Keaton back to his best, a glorious Western spoof (a happy return to the grounds of Our Hospitality). Keaton is Friendless, a hard-working guy adrift in the cut-and-thrust of the world. So much so that, visiting New York, he is literally trampled by bustling crowds. He heads out West to try his luck, becoming a ranch hand on a farm. There he finally meets someone who sees him as a friend – ‘Blue Eyes’, a cow who like him is an outcast from the herd. For the first time both of them has a friend – but what will Friendless do when Blue Eyes is to be packed off to a Los Angeles slaughterhouse?

You would never think that a man and a cow could be as sweet as they are together in this film. Keaton spent almost a month with the cow who plays Blue Eyes, going everywhere with her, feeding her and spending weeks with her. By the time they came to filming, the cow followed him without the slightest hesitation and never once seemed anything less than completely comfortable in his presence. Keaton (half) joked he never had a better leading lady than Blue Eyes – and his earnest, gentle and sincere playing of this friendship between man and beast gives Go West its heart.

Taking a gentle pop at DW Griffith again – Friendless and Blue Eyes both share names with leading characters from the director’s Intolerance – Keaton creates a film that many have called his one excursion into pathos but, for me, is all about creating character and story and having it service comedy. The laughs come faster for me in Go West than a farce like The Navigator because Keaton invests real warmth into this unlikely screen partnership. You invest in their story – these two outsiders, lonely and illtreated on the ranch, who find themselves as unlikely soul mates – and once you have that investment, you laugh along with their exploits.

Keaton also creates a variation on his usual character. Friendless is stoic but unlike other Keaton characters, he’s not bumbling or naïve, instead he seems to have accepted that he has no place in the world of men. Unlike other Keaton characters, he’s got an impressive ability to teach himself new skills rather than relying heavily on imitating others and reading instruction manuals. Friendless, slowly, picks up the skills of a ranch hand himself. Sure, he bungles his first attempts – his hilariously poor saddling of a horse (the saddle almost on the horses’ rump) being a case in point – but give him time and he’ll get there.

He’ll even win odd moments of respect. He gets two bulls back into the pen through skilful, unfazed, use of a red handkerchief (two ranch hands look on in grudging respect). He improvises an elastic string for his tiny pistol which works surprisingly well. He spots a cheat in a card-game and then skilfully disarms him (by placing his finger in the way of the trigger). In the film’s closing act – where a herd of bulls walk wildly around Los Angeles – he’s able to herd them back together with a great deal of skill, cunning and improvisation. He’s he’s undeniably good at the things he does – and gets better.

Go West has several great jokes, many of them initially based around Friendless’ place as an outsider. Selling his remaining goods to a pawnbroker in the films opening, he forgets to remove his shaving kit and mother’s picture from a desk: of course, the pawnbroker immediately charges him for taking the goods (making his money back in moments). On the ranch, Friendless inevitably times his arrival at the daily meals with everyone else finishing up and leaving the table, forcing Friendless to leave as well (he doesn’t eat for days on this ranch). His clumsy attempts at ranch life leads to several pratfalls of inevitable high-standard.

But it all starts to change as he forms a friendship with Blue Eyes. He’ll bend over backwards to help her. He’ll stay up all night with a gun to protect her from wolves. He’ll strap antlers to her head to help her ward off bulls. He’ll shave a brand (thank goodness he grabbed that shaving kit) into her back to save her from the fire. And he’ll raise what money he can to try and buy her and, when that fails, he’ll jump on a train to travel with her to save her.

It leads into the film’s action packed third act. It starts with a classic Keaton piece of business. Trying to earn the money to buy Blue Eyes, he buys into a rigged poker game. Calling the dealer on cheating, the ranch hand pulls a gun and orders Keaton “When you say that – SMILE”. Will cinema’s most famous stony-faced comic finally crack a grin? It’s a lovely in-joke – and Keaton’s two fingered mouth push grin the perfect response, as his ingeniously shrewd solution to prevent violence. Jumping on a train from here (this is another classic train sequence from a Keaton film) he dodges bullets from an attack from outlaws and ends up the only man on board with an army of cows.

The final sequence – a series of sight gags as cows invade shops, Turkish baths and street stalls in Los Angeles before Keaton dons a red-devil suit to lead them back into a holding pens in a perverse twist on Seven Chances – is sometimes overlong, but offers plenty of delights. But none match the sweetness and innocence of that friendship between man and cow. Keaton’s chemistry with Blue Eyes – and his understanding that the beauty of silence makes animals as legitimate characters in many ways as humans – shines out. It gives the film a real heart and tenderness that grounds all the jokes in something real, as well as providing the film with real stakes (because, after all, Blue Eyes is in danger of being turned into one).

Go West is often overlooked in the Keaton CV but, despite being a fraction overlong, it’s a warm, tender and sweet story packed with excellent gags. This isn’t manipulative pathos – instead this is Keaton using humanity to deliver a unique sort of pure romance. This is possibly one of the finest films about friendship ever made – and Blue Eyes stands with Balthasar as one of the greatest animal actors on screen.

Cat Ballou (1965)

Zany western comedy, a little dated, but with almost enough good jokes

Director: Eliot Silverstein

Cast: Jane Fonda (Cat Ballou), Lee Marvin (Kid Shelleen/Tim Strawn), Michael Callan (Clay Boone), Dwayne Hickman (Uncle Jed), Nat King Cole (Sunrise Kid), Stubby Kate (Sam the Shade), Tom Nardini (Jackson Two-Bears), John Marley (Frankie Ballou), Reginald Denny (Sir Harry Percival)

In a town out West in Wyoming, Cat Ballou (Jane Fonda) is to be hanged as a notorious outlaw. How did she end up here? Let Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye tell you as they recount ‘The Ballad of Cat Ballou’. This young, would-be school-teacher ended up on the gallows after a feud over her father’s (John Marley) land with Sir Harry Percival (Reginald Denny). Percival has a brutal hired gun, Tim Shrawn (Lee Marvin). So, Cat hired her own gunman, the legendary Kid Shelleen (Marvin again) who has become an equally legendary drunk. After the death of her father, Cat, Kid and her friends and love interests form a gang to bring Percival’s corporation down.

Cat Ballou stems from an era when audiences were not quite ready for the violent, nihilistic Western revisionism that would spawn the likes of McCabe and Mrs Miller and The Wild Bunch, but could no longer take the Ford/Wayne style Western seriously. Instead, it takes its inspiration from Swinging Sixties comedy, playing like Tom Jones or a Dick Lester Beatles movie. It’s zany, tongue-in-cheek, daubed in primary colours and nothing in it is meant to be taken particularly seriously, not even the bullets. It’s a fast-paced entertainment and if it looks rather dated today, at least it has its moments.

It’s most notable as the film that won Marvin the Oscar for his double performance as the drunk, shambling Kid Shelleen and the Marvinesque heavy Tim Strawn (with missing nose). Marvin revelled a chance to showcase his comic skills – and even have his stereotypical role as a bruising, violent killer as a contrast. Kid Shelleen doesn’t turn-up until almost a third of the way in, but all the film’s most memorable moments involve him. Slurring, scruffy, stumbling and only able to shoot straight when a little bit pissed (in an early shooting test he literally can’t hit a barn door), Marvin offers not only a red-eyed piece of comedy acting just this side of hammy, but also a neat jokey commentary on the truth behind an army of Western heavies (Cat is hugely disappointed to find the stories she’s read of Kid’s exploits, in no ways matches the mess she sees before her).

Marvin, rather graciously, always claimed of his Oscar “that half of this belongs to a horse somewhere out in San Fernando Valley”. It’s a touchingly modest reference to the film’s closing sequence – the inevitable rescue attempt on Cat – where Kid turns up pissed, riding a horse that seems as drunk as him (a neat shot, that took much careful animal wrangling, shows both Kid and his horse leaning lopsidedly against a wall, the horse with its legs drunkenly crossed). But Marvin’s performance works because it nails the tone of the film in a way no-one else really does.

That’s arguably true of Jane Fonda, who seems either slightly bemused or mildly contemptuous of the role she’s ended up in. When the film throws in moments close to tragedy, she reacts with more emotional realism than a zany comedy can support. She’s not willing to surrender herself to the moments of farce or flirtation, not helped by the dull or forgettable performances of her love interests. Callan lacks charisma or flair as outlaw Clay Boone, Dwayne Hickman overeggs as Boone’s comedic partner-in-crime Uncle Jed while Tom Nardini tries hard but lacks grace as Jackson Two-Bears. Fonda is also stuck in the only role where she can’t corpse at the drunken antics of Marvin.

The film bounces along, from its animated opening, via a series of comedic twists on Western tropes (a dance, a fight, a train robbery etc). Personally, I’ve never really been a fan of zany comedies, and my mind wasn’t changed here. Mixed with its very 60s view of the West, all colour splashed checked shirts, the try-hard craziness of Cat Ballou can start to wear cynical modern viewers like me down.

Which isn’t to say there isn’t a good joke here or there, or that Marvin isn’t worth the price of admission. Silverstein directs with a professional smoothness that leaves the actors to get on with it (perhaps a little too much). The darker moments of the film don’t always marry up successfully with the tone – Cat’s reaction to the death of her father is from a different movie altogether – but generally it glides along, helped with some catchy tunes well sung by Cole and Kaye as a ballad-touting Greek Chorus.

Cat Ballou might actually be best enjoyed by taking a leaf out of Kid Shelleen’s books: get a couple of whiskies inside you and you’ll find the accuracy of your laughter jumping up several notches.

Seven Chances (1925)

Sub-par Keaton comedy, remembered only for its chase scene, but otherwise best forgotten

Director: Buster Keaton

Cast: Buster Keaton (James Shannon), T Roy Barnes (Billy Meekin), Snitz Edwards (Lawyer), Ruth Dwyer (Mary Jones), Frances Raymond (Mrs Jones), Erwin Connelly (Clergyman), Jules Cowles (Hired Hand), Jean Arthur (Receptionist)

It’s the film Keaton didn’t care for – so much so he told a film restorer working on his films to essentially not bother with it. It was a play purchased for him by producer Joseph Schenck, rather than chosen by the physical-comedy gag-meister, who called it a “sappy farce”. Still, he did his best with it – and then some, since it became one of his biggest hits – and, if it’s far from a stand-out on his CV, that’s not Keaton’s fault. In fact, the only parts of the film anyone remembers are all due to Keaton alone.

The plot follows businessman James Shannon (Buster Keaton). He finds out from a lawyer (Snitz Edwards) that he is to inherit $7million – but only if he is married by 7pm on his 27^th birthday. And naturally, today is his 27^th birthday! Bungling his proposal to the girl he loves (but was always too shy to ask) Mary (Ruth Dwyer), he and his business partner (T Roy Barnes) head to a country club and ask every girl he can see to marry him. They all say no (guess how many he asks) until an advert in the paper revealing the fortune awaiting a willing bride, produces an army of ladies who will chase Shannon to the ends of the earth for marriage. Can he get back to Mary, reconcile and marry by 7pm?

You can see why Seven Chances is an awkward fit for Keaton. He was more comfortable in a role where the world was awash with obstacles. From natural elements to modern machinery, Keaton was the impassive little guy struggling against the odds. He was much less suited to the faintly unsympathetic Shannon, where coincidence, shyness and poor explanations were his problem. Keaton reworked the character to make him more sympathetic – it’s shyness rather than unwillingness that delays his proposal (in an opening technicolour sequence showing the passing of the seasons around Shannon’s ever-delayed proposal), but its still a role he lacks affinity for.

The film’s opening is too dialogue driven – it throws up more title cards than almost any Keaton film you can think of – and Keaton looks restrained by the role. It’s telling that the “Keaton” part for the first ten minutes goes to Snitz Edwards (very funny with his eternally put-upon face) who struggles to get anyone to listen to his news about a possible inheritance. The film rushes through much of the plays plot in its opening 40 minutes, recognising that it’s essentially the same gag – Keaton asks a woman to marry him, she says no – repeated over and over again.

Those seven chances whizz by in the country club, as a progression of women (including an unbilled, pre-fame Jean Arthur) turn him down with a mix of laughter, anger and contempt. To be honest its diminishing returns, even with some Keaton directorial flair (one proposal takes place walking up the stairs, without breaking step after rejection Keaton walks down the stairs with a second unwilling woman). There is nothing for Keaton to get his teeth stuck into.

It’s only in the second half, the play forgotten, that Keaton finds sure ground – and the films memorable moments. The advert produces an army of women – in some shots, it looks like hundreds if not more. As Keaton sleeps in a church pew, it slowly fills up around him. Eventually a clever cross fade (similar to an early cross fade that moves a cars location without it moving in frame from one house to the other – Keaton understood editing like few others) sees the church filled with women. Keaton awakes, is ambushed under a scrum of would-be brides and makes his escape.

What follows is a madcap chase through the streets – including several inspired tracking and crane shots stressing the speed and the size of the pursuing crowd. The chase passes through a police march, a football game (where the players are all crushed by the mob), an industrial plant and then into the countryside, Keaton running for all he is worth.

At one point Keaton intended to end the film like this. It wasn’t until a test audience failed to laugh that he realised it needed to change – and he cottoned onto the unexpectedly loud laugh from when he had thrown himself down a hill (a suicidal looking jump on screen) and dislodged some rocks, causing a small avalanche. Back out to location they went, accompanied by dozens of papier-mâché rocks of various sizes, and scaled up the gag to huge levels, Keaton running, leaping and climbing up trees to escape this onslaught of boulders. It also created a reason for the women to be blocked off – and allow Keaton to escape to propose to his girl and create the just-in-time happy ending.

It’s that chase people remember – and gives Seven Chances a fonder public image than it deserves. But its ten minutes of great material in over an hour of sub-par Keaton. It doesn’t help that this film, more than any other Keaton, has a parade of black-face gags (Jules Cowles in a head-in-hands performance today) revolving around Mary’s servant, who is (of course) stupid, slow and lazy. It’s compounded by a gag where Keaton rejects (in horror) the idea of proposing to a Black woman.

Seven Chances is fondly remembered for its chase – but if you want to watch a Keaton chase, there are many better options than this, a film meaner and less good-natured than his best work.

The Navigator (1924)

Keaton is cast adrift in a film that is all gags and no story or stakes and not the better for it

Director: Buster Keaton (& Donald Crisp)

Cast: Buster Keaton (Rollo Treadaway), Kathryn McGuire (Betsy O’Brien), Frederick Vroom (John O’Brien), Noble Johnson (Chief), Clarence Burton (Spy)

Buster Keaton claimed The Navigator was his best film. With all due respect he’s wrong. The Navigator was born out of the ahead-of-its-time failure of Sherlock Jr. When that marvel of cinematic invention didn’t land with audiences, Keaton played safe. He put a lid on the tricks and focused on the gags. In fact, he cast himself away in a boat with only Kathryn McGuire for company and they told jokes for 45 minutes. That’s the basics of The Navigator and, for me, the lack of plot, stakes or character ends up in a much weaker film.

Buster is Rollo Treadaway, a rich sap, who one day decides to get married and books the honeymoon before he’s asked his planned intended Betsy (Kathryn McGuire). When she says no, Rollo goes on honeymoon anyway but in a confusion at the docks ends up on the wrong ship, The Navigator. It’s owned by Betsy’s father – but spies for a foreign power plan to set it adrift. In further confusion, Betsy also ends up on board and she and Rollo wake-up drifting at sea. How will two pampered rich people work out how to look after themselves on a deserted ship?

The Navigator keeps things simple, cranking up the jokes in a film much closer in spirit to his shorts, all designed to be easy to digest and just tickly the funny bone. You feel they genuinely did just cast the ship out to sea and waited for Keaton to work out as many gags as he could until the camera ran out of film. Donald Crisp was hired to direct the dramatic stuff, but Keaton quickly realised he didn’t need him and didn’t like Crisp’s vague prologue about wicked spies (he was right, it’s totally forgettable unlike the equivalent opening of Our Hospitality) so set off to sea without him. (Crisp makes a visual cameo as the painting of the ship’s captain that swings in front of a porthole).

There are, for me, three key gags that work in The Navigator. Rollo’s spontaneous decision to get married (based on seeing a happy couple outside of the window), after which he distractedly bathes fully clothed then gets his chauffeur to drive him to Betsy’s house – on the opposite side of the street (the car does a big circular loop across the street). After the rejected proposal he informs the chauffeur, he needs a walk home to clear his mind.

This is, in many ways, the funniest, most inventive moment in The Navigator. It’s a great little showpiece as well for the (passionately not-getting-married) Kathryn McGuire and the finest example of Keaton’s capacity for easily led saps, overwhelmingly influenced by things they see around them. It’s the part of the film I enjoyed the most and its over after ten minutes.

The Navigator starts to drift as soon as it heads to sea. There is some neat camera work that suggests the haunting emptiness of the ship (it’s so vast we get an amusing series of visual jokes as Keaton and McGuire consistently miss bumping into each other while walking around it), but where other Keaton films would have explored more the ghostly darkness of this technological marvel (or the oppressive nature of it emptiness) The Navigator largely shies away from this.

The best sequence on the ship follows McGuire and Keaton’s attempts to cook a meal in a massive galley, hampered by the fact that (a) everything on the ship is set-up to cook for hundreds not two and (b) the two pampered souls have no idea how to open a tin can or boil a kettle, let alone cook a meal. Three potatoes are thrown into an enormous vat. Keaton goes through a series of trial error involving drills and carving knives to get into tins. McGuire can’t work out that sea water isn’t drinkable or how much coffee is needed for a cup. They are both befuddled by fish (which they basically eat raw) and can’t find cutlery so make do with kitchen utensils. It’s a sharply observed, well-constructed scene.

But other than this, the film struggles with a series of gags that rather disappoint. There is a painfully overlong underwater sequence where Keaton wrestles with a fake swordfish. There is a lack of Keaton’s trademark physical stunts (aside from a bit of business with a deckchair). An encounter with an island tribe – a bit uncomfortable today to watch these Black-skinned savages – is overlong and heads into a siege that is never particularly funny (other than a gag of Keaton accidentally dragging around a miniature cannon that no matter where he turns is always aimed at him – a gag later lifted for Jar-Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace).

The main problem I have about The Navigator is that this bag of gags never engages me because the film isn’t about anything. Neither of these people feel like real people (and, lord knows, Keaton characters were often lightly-sketched comic roles, but this is ridiculous), the film has no stakes and has no plot momentum, drifting like the boat they are stuck on. I need more for a comedy, to feel invested. Without that investment, it’s just stuff happening. A Keaton’s I won’t revisit. It was, however, his biggest hit. What do I know?

The Three Musketeers (1973) / The Four Musketeers (1974)

A film of two halves, in more ways than one: the swashbuckling original and its dark sequel

Director: Richard Lester

Cast: Michael York (d’Artagnan), Oliver Reed (Athos), Frank Finlay (Porthos/O’Reilly), Richard Chamberlain (Aramis), Raquel Welch (Constance Bonacieux), Jean-Pierre Cassel (Louis XIII), Geraldine Chaplin (Anne of Austria), Charlton Heston (Cardinal Richelieu), Faye Dunaway (Milady de Winter), Christopher Lee (Count de Rochefort), Simon Ward (Duke of Buckingham), Spike Milligan (Bonacieux), Roy Kinnear (Planchet), Georges Wilson (Captain de Treville)

All for one and one for all! The Three Musketeers is probably the greatest adaptation of Dumas’ rollicking classic, a wonderful mix of swashbuckler, romance and Hellzapoppin comedy, that never takes itself particularly seriously and is crammed with actors having a whale of a time. It’s not quite a send-up, but it’s also not quite a straight re-telling either. Instead, it’s gunning all-out for entertainment – and it succeeds most of the time.

d’Artagnan (Michael York) arrives in Paris in 1625 desperate to join the musketeers. After various adventures along the way – including a rivalry with suavely villainious Rochefort (Christopher Lee) – the impulsive young man forms a friendship (after bumps in the road) with the famed musketeers Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finlay) and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain). Falling in love with the unhappily married Constance (Raquel Welch), maid to Queen Anne (Geraldine Chaplin), d’Artagnan and his friends are dragged into foiling a plot by the ambitious Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) to use the ingenious Milady de Winter (Faye Dunaway) to expose the Queen’s infidelity with the Duke of Buckingham (Simon Ward). Will our heroes manage to foil the scheme in time?

The Three Musketeers adapts the first third or so – the most famous and by far the most enjoyable part – of Dumas’ novel. With an irreverent script by Flashman author George MacDonald Fraser, its framed as a rollicking romp with a tongue-in-cheek humour. Richard Lester, famed for his cheeky Beatles comedies (and the film was originally envisaged as a vehicle for the Fab Four), added his trademark scruffy, opportunistic comedy.

The film is awash with muttered asides – many of them well delivered by Roy Kinnear’s exasperated servant Planchet – that are only just picked up by the sound mix. My favourite? d’Artagnan bursting into a room full of guards, yanking a rug with a yell in an attempt to upend them, succeeding only in tearing the corner off it, then immediately jumping out of a window, leaving the bemused guards one of whom plaintively mutters “He’s torn our carpet” – I find this funny on multiple levels, from York’s all-in energy to the stillness of the shot, to the underplayed sadness of the punchline.

Lester’s film is full of long-shot gags – passengers in litters being dropped in a lake, d’Artagnan swinging on a rope to knock someone off a horse, missing and falling in the mud or his jump from a third storey window only to immediately reappear having landed on a (anachronistic) window cleaner cart. While the film does have its moments of drama, danger and intensity, it doesn’t ease up on visual humour, or gags (“This ticket is for one man” “I am one man. This is a servant”). It’s all part of Lester’s plan to make a fast-paced, pantomimic entertainment in which nothing is intended to ever be too serious.

It’s all played with maximum commitment by the cast, all of whom buy into the films’ tone. Michael York leaves very little in the locker-room with a performance full of youthful bravado, lusty hurrahs and naïve, winning eagerness. It’s a very hard balance to get right but he is never overbearing, but provides a relatable, likeable lead. He’s physical commitment to a series of Buster Keaton style gags is also commendable. He sparks a rather sweet romance with Raquel Welch, who is not the world’s strongest actress, but gamely delivers a series of pratfalls as the eternally clumsy Constance.

Around these two, a series of experienced actors delight in larger-than-life roles. Reed brings a surly intensity to Athos, a reminder of how great a career this charisma laden actor could have had. Finlay gives a Falstaffian joie de vivre to Porthos. Chamberlain (with little to do) strikes a gamely romantic figure as Aramis. As the baddies, Heston clearly enjoys subverting his grandiosity as the scheming Cardinal, Dunaway has a kittenish sensuality as Milady and Christopher Lee is so perfect as the debonair Rochefort that his eye patch (unmentioned in Dumas) has become de rigour for every Rochefort performance afterwards.

The Three Musketeers is crammed with swashes being buckled. The sword fights come thick and fast and are all shot in a series of impressive locations (the camera work of David Watkin, design of Brian Eatwell and costumes of Yvonne Blake do a wonderful job creating a sumptuous period setting). At times they do look a little ragged today – producers the Salkinds ran a tight budget, and there are multiple reports of the slightly-under-rehearsed fights leading to near-serious injury (this slapdash preparation would lead to tragic consequences when Roy Kinnear was killed on the belated second sequel 15 years later). But the actors enter into them with a firey commitment (a little too much so in Reed’s case according to the terrified stuntmen) and rumbunctious energy that really sells these as gripping action. They are also give a certain air of peril that gives just enough weight to the film.

The Three Musketeers has moments of dated clumsiness – the bizarely arty slow-mo opening with blurred motion feels totally out-of-keeping with the rest of the film – and not all the jokes land (Spike Milligan in particular is completely over-indulged in the film’s least successful comic moments). Not every performance works – Chaplain in particular is weak as Anne of Austria – and not all the jokes pay off. The musical score by Michael Legrand, catchy as it is, sometimes overeggs the “isn’t this all such fast-paced fun” angle. But the stuff that lands, really does well and there is more than enough fun, action, adventure and rollicking good humour to keep you entertained on a weekend afternoon.

And then there were two (or rather four)

There is always a twist in the tale. At some point while making The Three Musketeers the Salkinds realised they would never get it ready for the Paris premiere. But they could get half the film ready. So, they released that and cheerily announced at the end a sequel was already in the can. Problem was no one had mentioned it to the cast, who discovered they had shot an entire movie for free. A court case exploded, which the Salkinds lost, settling with actors and leading to a new clause being inserted into all contracts for actors preventing such a dodge happening again.

The Four Musketeers covers the second, less famous, much less fun part of Dumas’ novel. Rather like novel, it’s a rambling affair that lacks the compelling narrative thrust (We’ve got to get those diamonds and save the Queen!) which made The Three Musketeers so entertaining. It doesn’t help that its also considerably darker, serious and bleaker as bodies pile up and things get serious.

This makes the sequel a very different beast to the first. Energetic heroism prevented villainy in the first film, but here it often fails . Milady (Faye Dunaway) has sworn revenge and is ordered by Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) to assassinate Buckingham (Simon Ward). Along the way she kidnaps Constance (Raquel Welch) and seduces d’Artagnan (Michael York) seduced. The Musketeers rescue Constance, fight at La Rochelle and do their best to defend Buckingham – but nothing goes to plan, especially after Athos (Oliver Reed) realises Milady and his criminal ex-wife (thought dead) are one-and-the-same.

The Four Musketeers keeps up the humour, but it is frequently at odds with the darker film it sits in. Gone is the high-paced musical score of Michel Legrand, replaced with a lyrical series of melodies by Lalo Schifrin. It’s telling that Welch – whose comic clumsiness was a large part of the first movie – appears only briefly here. Similarly, Cassell’s shallow monarch (dubbed by Richard Briers) pops up just once, Roy Kinnear’s Planchet isn’t in the first hour and Spike Milligan’s free-wheeling improvisation is missing completely (in that case, no bad thing).

The film feels tonally at odds with the first film and even, at times, with itself. The Three Musketeers was full of sword fights but no deaths – here sword strokes are lethal. As the Musketeers comically bounce around at La Rochelle sight gags abound – but it feels at odds with a film where the death is very real. The more realistic feel means some set pieces – such as Rochefort and d’Artagnan fighting on an inexplicably frozen lake in the height of Summer – become harder to swallow.

Some performers do flourish. Oliver Reed comes into his own as an increasingly dark and vengeful Athos, giving into temptations of shocking revenge. Faye Dunaway laces her role with cold, murderous fury. They have most of the film’s most compelling scenes – but the incredibly dark ending (which involves our heroes actively perpetrating judicial murder with a terrified victim) while loyal to the book, feels far too heavy for a pair of films that started with Buster Keatonish comedy.

The loyalty to the book and the commitment to follow it is partly to blame. There is a reason why most adaptations chuck away this section of the book. It lacks a clear narrative line for emotional connection and is highly episodic. d’Artagnan, in the book, does indeed sleep around after Constance disappears – but when the film requires their relationship to be the emotional heartbeat, is it a good idea to have him jump into bed with two women within days of her disappearance?

Lester announces the more sombre parts by filming them in a very framed, artful way inspired by the old masters, with a static camera and medium shot, reliant on Schifrin’s maudlin music. He’s far more at home with the comic business delivered by Finlay (very good) and Chamberlain (still with nothing to do). At other points he surrenders initiative to legends like Heston (suavely menacing), Lee (whose Rochefort steps up a level in lip-curling contempt) and Dunaway.

The finest thing on display are the sets and the sword fights, which are even more desperate, ragged and violently dramatic than last time (when Rochefort and d’Artagnan stop in one to take a breath, you are not remotely surprised given the total commitment we’ve seen). The action set pieces all look really impressive and staged with confidence and brio. It’s just a shame that much of the rest of the story feels like its being told by a natural comic trying hard to be King Lear, but not able to resist throwing a few gags in. It makes for an entertaining, but tonally messy film that feels it has come from a totally different place than its flawed but fun predecessor.

Sherlock Jr (1924)

Keaton invents Looney Tunes in this master-class in both cinema and comedy

Director: Buster Keaton

Cast: Buster Keaton (Projectionist/Sherlock Jr), Kathryn McGuire (The Girl), Joe Keaton (The Girl’s Father), Erwin Connelly (The Hired Man/The Butler), Ward Crane (The Local Sheik/The Villain), Ford West (Theatre Manager/Gillette)

If there is one thing you learn from watching Keaton’s masterpiece, Sherlock Jr, it’s this: all Looney Tunes cartoons are Buster Keaton films. The level of astounding, frantic, comic genius in Sherlock Jr hits new heights and its mix of slapstick, improbable stunts, chases and poker-faced reactions basically makes it resemble nothing less than the world’s greatest cartoon made real. There is something either delightful or double-takingly how-did-they-do-that impressive in every scene and the entire film is assembled and designed with invention dripping from every pore.

Buster is an absent-minded, day-dreaming projectionist in a local theatre. But what he really wants to be is a detective. He gets his chance when he discovers that the father (Joe Keaton) of the girl (Kathyn McGuire) he’s in love with has had his watch stolen. We know it’s her villainous suitor (Ward Crane), but Buster’s clumsy investigation only ends up getting himself framed, with only the Girl to clear his name. Back in the theatre, Buster daydreams himself into the film he’s projecting, where he is the famed Sherlock Jr, master-detective besting scheming villains and winning the heart of the Girl, all of whom now look like the people he encountered in the real world.

Sherlock Jnr resolves almost its entire plot in the opening fifteen minutes after Buster fails to prove his mettle as a detective. Bless, he goes about his investigation with a robotic lack of imagination, slavishly following the steps in his How to be a Detective book right down to following his suspect by almost literally dogging his footsteps (requiring a parade of sudden jerks, turns and dodges to avoid being seen). Fortunately, the Girl solves the crime for him, clears his name and heads to the theatre to tell him while he drifts off to sleep. What this means is that we can enjoy Buster’s day-dream of the movies without ever worrying about how he will solve the pickle he is in in real life.

Sherlock Jr can focus on its delightful fantasy sequence. In an oft-imitated stroke of double exposure shooting, the dream Buster emerges from the body of the sleeping Buster, picks up his (dream) hat and walks out of the projection room to the theatre where he is flabbergasted to see people he knows playing roles in the film. Why shouldn’t he be tempted to walk down the aisle and try to climb into the picture? Of course, the villain responds by tossing him out of the frame and back into the auditorium (just to reassure us again, Keaton cuts to the sleeping Buster in the projection room).

Keaton’s film has hugely inventive, creative fun with the medium as Buster re-enters the movie only to find – with the power of editing – his location changing with dizzying speed, without his position changing from shot-to-shot. He steps down a flight of stairs to find it turn immediately into a bench. He tries to sit on the bench but lands in a busy road. He walks down the road to find himself on a cliff edge. He peers off the edge to find himself among lions, then crawling through the desert, sitting on the shore, diving into a snow drift. This whole sequence is effortlessly, brilliantly assembled with Keaton’s position seemingly never changing but the location changing almost a dozen times. Think that cartoon when Daffy Duck goes to war with the cartoonist. No one before had understood the comic potential of editing, shifting locations and changed perspectives.

It’s perhaps the stroke of defining genius in a film crammed with moments from here to the end that leave you breathless with their chutzpah, daring and invention. From here, Sherlock Jr is full to the brim with hilarious comic stunts that Keaton makes look effortless but required such complex planning (and endless repetition on set to get right) that your admiration for their humour is matched only by the wonder at the dedication and sweat it took to deliver them.

In the dream-film, Sherlock Jr has just enough of Keaton’s comic clumsiness to be amusingly recognisable, but every detecting trick he plays turns up trumps. He tails suspects successfully, locates stolen jewels, unmasks criminals and he is never outwitted by the criminals (saying that he can also ride on the handlebars of a motorbike for miles not noticing that the driver has long since fallen off). Through it all, Keaton gives every set-piece the sort of physical commitment Hollywood wouldn’t see again until Tom Cruise started to embark on Impossible Missions.

All of this needed time. Imagine, if you will, the innumerable takes Keaton needed to execute a deluge of seemingly impossible trick shots in a game of pool, where every ball is pocketed except the number 13 (which has been replaced by a bomb). This is the sort of Newtonian logic of a Bugs Bunny cartoon but done for real. It’s doubly funny later when you realise Sherlock Jr wasn’t being phenomenally lucky but was in fact aware the ball was a bomb and was missing deliberately. Even without that knowledge, watching balls bend round the number 13 or divide perfectly so that two balls pass by without contact is breath-taking.

Equally so a stunt which sees Keaton fold up a disguise dress in a window, head into the room, then dive out of the window, straight into the dress, and walk away. The stunt is so incredible, Keaton even dissolves part of the wall of the building so we can see it done in one take. If that’s not enough, moments later he will seemingly dive into a wall through the chest of an accomplice who will then walk away – all in one take. Keaton wanted these magic tricks to seem impossible, to leave the audience helplessly trying to work out what they have seen. The answer, in every case, was endless attempts and vaudeville expertise. Just as Keaton worked out the comic potential of editing could transport him, in a single step, hundreds of miles – so he also worked out it could make impossible events look effortless by removing all the failed attempts.

The film culminates in a chase scene the Looney Tunes cartoons would riff on endlessly (the entire Wile-E-Coyote/Road Runner series is effectively a long version of the end of Sherlock Jr). Sherlock Jr races to rescue a girl, on the handles of a rider-less motorbike, racing over roads, blockages, train tracks and all sorts then switches with her to a car, that similarly does a series of improbably manoeuvres before it crashes into a lake and turns into a slowly sinking boat. All hilarious, all directed and played with a super abundant energy.

And then he wakes into a romantic reconciliation where our hero, slavishly, follows the romantic gestures of the man in the movie he is watching to win a kiss from the Girl. We knew the happy ending was coming – that’s why we enjoyed, pressure-free, the fantasy sequence where nothing was at stake. Sherlock Jr delivers a comic tour-de-force so packed with delightful tricks, committed stunts and joyous invention that it feels like it sails by even quicker than its 45 minutes. It’s a perfectly sustained and balanced series of gags all wrapped up in something that uses the medium perfectly. It’s the first and best Looney Tunes cartoon ever made.

Watch it now!

Our Hospitality (1923)

Keaton’s feature-length debut is a masterpiece of comic invention and slapstick stunt thrills

Director: Buster Keaton (& John G Blystone)

Cast: Buster Keaton (Willie McKay), Joe Roberts (Joseph Canfield), Natalie Talmadge (Virginia Canfield), Ralph Bushman (Clayton Canfield), Craig Ward (Lee Canfield), Monte Collins (Parson), Joe Keaton (Train engineer), Jack Duffy (Train conductor)

It starts with a dark and stormy night. If that sounds like cheap melodrama that’s kind of the point. Keaton’s first feature length comedy would be different from his joke-crammed shorts. This would be plot-led comedy, a drama full of jokes. As part of that, Keaton started the film with a storm-filled, joke-free, DW Griffith-inspired opening salvo that sees the lead character’s father dead in Intolerance inspired opening. With its gun flashes and bodies, we know in this film bullets kill.

The father is John McKay and he dies along with James Canfield in a deadly exchange. It’s part of a long-running feud betwixt McKays and Canfields (any similarity to the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud is entirely deliberate), and the rest of the Canfields swear revenge on McKay’s baby son-and-heir. Twenty-one years later, Willie McKay (Buster Keaton) has grown up in New York, ignorant of the feud. When he returns to his father’s ranch, he finds himself in the awkward position of having fallen in love with Virginia Canfield (Natalie Talmadge), daughter of his newly discovered deadly enemy Joseph Canfield (Joe Roberts). How will matters be resolved?

With a great deal of laughs and a breath-taking series of stunts. Our Hospitality is early Keaton but already it cements his legend of comic invention and physical daring as well as his dynamism and imagination as a filmmaker. Our Hospitality is crammed with comic bits of pieces that Keaton would go on to explore and finetune in even greater detail in later films, but also culminates in a (admittedly slightly tongue-in-cheek) but still surprisingly gripping action sequence as our hero battles to survive a mountainous waterfall and save his love from toppling.

The film neatly divides into four acts, each subtly different in tone but all unified by Keaton’s creativity. Stone-faced and implacable, Keaton never mugs or goes overboard for the laugh but trusts that, with the intimacy of the camera, the smallest inflection or slightest turn of the head will raise a chuckle. He’s also charmingly innocent, refreshingly resourceful and rather brave – a perfect combination for a little guy (it helps, as always, that Keaton is literally a little guy) we root for.

That charm powers a lot of the film’s second act, a long incident-filled train journey McKay takes to the South. Keaton was fascinated by the comic potential of early technology – watching Willie, po-facedly, cycling with an early peddle-free bike, his feet alternately propelling the bike and lifted in the air is hilarious (the Smithsonian even asked if it could display this perfect replica) – and he deliberately set the film in 1831 to introduce a Stephenson-style rocket train, pulling its open carriages behind it. This vehicle not only looks hilariously ramshackle and strangely incongruous, it also opens an ocean of possibilities.

It is, for starters, hilariously slow – Willie’s dog has no problem keeping up with it. Its tracks have been laid with a rigid rule-following lack of imagination – at one point they ride up over a fallen tree log, the train and carriages bumping over it. The train is forced to stop by a donkey that refuses to leave the line (eventually the engineer simply drags the tracks around the donkey). There is an on-going feud between the Engineer (played by Keaton’s father Joe) and ticket-master about who is actually in charge of the train. At one point it veers off the tracks and down a road (everyone comments about how much more smoother this is) and later gets separated from the carriages at a junction, requiring Keaton gymnastics to bring it together. By the time it trundles into the station – and note how beautifully the train is filmed – you’ve had more comic invention than most other comedies.

During this journey Willie falls in love with fellow passenger Virginia (played, a little awkwardly, by Keaton’s wife Natalie Talmadge), little knowing she is a Canfield. The Canfields swiftly discover his identity: Willie asks one of her brother’s directions to his ranch, and the brother guides him there, all the while darting away at every opportunity to try and borrow a gun to take his revenge.

Most of the second act, which gives the film its title, revolves around Willie’s invite from Natalie to dinner at the Canfield house. Southern gentility declares the Canfields cannot take revenge on Willie while he is their guest – as soon as Willie realises this he does everything he can to remain in the house, as the (literal) instant he steps outside the door, guns come out. (Keaton also gets a lot of comic mileage from the cumbersome one-shot guns, which Willie frequently pinches to discharge to give himself a few precious moments to move outside while various Canfield’s reload).

When Willie eventually flees the house – disguised as a lady – it leads into a glorious, action-packed chase scene. Scaling mountains and cliffs, shot with a vertigo inducing brilliance (in reality Keaton placed the camera on its side and made it appear with his genius physicality that he was climbing rather than crawling). There are falls into rapids, Willie is dragged behind a racing train carriage and finally bobs and floats down a rapid (including one shot, kept in the film, where Keaton’s rope snapped and he was literally washed head first down a river). It culminates in an athletic, stunt-filled, precarious balance on a log suspended over a waterfall (a brilliant backdrop shot makes this feel impossibly high), swinging desperately on a rope to save Virginia from falling.

Our Hospitality is awash with comic energy and genius touches of business but it’s also an impressively ahead-of-its-time in the skill of its plotting and structure – you could pretty much remake it exactly today (but with words) without changing a detail, and it would still be a hit. But it wouldn’t be a legend because the only thing you wouldn’t have is Keaton. And he’s the lodestone that balances the whole thing.

The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming (1966)

Ealingesque farce meets Cold War moralising in this not-quite funny enough farce

Director: Norman Jewison

Cast: Carl Reiner (Walt Whittaker), Eva Marie Saint (Elspeth Whittaker), Alan Arkin (Rozanov), Brian Keith (Link Mattocks), Theodore Bikel (Captain), Jonathan Winters (Norman Jones), Tessie O’Shea (Alice Foss), John Philip Law (Alexei Kolchin), Ben Blue (Luther Grilk), Andrea Dromm (Alison Palmer), Paul Ford (Fendall Hawkins)

Off the coast of a New England island, a Russian captain (Theodore Bikel) wants to take a quick peek at the US of A. Bad idea. When his sub runs aground, they are forced to send a party ashore led by political officer Rozanov (Alan Arkin) to find a motor launch to get the sub back out to sea. They run into the Whittakers – playwright Walt (Carl Reiner), wife Elspeth (Eva Marie Saint) and their kids – take them hostage, steal their car, cut the telephone lines and try to save themselves. The town quickly hears news of the possible arrival of Russians, and the hysteria grows – just as Walt starts to feel his sympathies grow for the terrified Russian sailors. Can peace be reached across the divide?

The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming is basically an Ealing-esque comedy – written by Ealing veteran William Rose – translated not entirely successfully to America. Directed with an epic, widescreen sweep by Norman Jewison that sometimes crushes the life out of a comedy of confusion and coincidence, The Russians are Coming wants to be both a broad farce and carry an earnest message about the Cold War. It’s quite sweet that the film, made four years after Cuba nearly turned the world into an ash pile, wants to focus on what unites as humans rather than divides us, but the message is at times crow-barred in a little too forcibly.

It’s very hard not to see the Ealing influence on every single scene – and I suspect the film would have worked better as 4:3 black-and-white film full of harassed people in offices and homes, rather than the grand panoramas of the town and large crowd scenes. The Ealing influence can be seen in the townsfolk, who become a farcical panicked crowd of have-a-go heroes, making sweeping decisions based on no information at all, led by puffed up self-important, self-elected leaders determined to seize their moments of heroism. Misunderstandings abound, as tiny pieces of evidence balloon the “threat” into a full-blown invasion: the crowd are almost disappointed when they arrive at an airfield to find not a smouldering ruin but an operator blissfully unaware anything is going on.

Similarly, the Russians themselves fit nicely into the Ealing model of ordinary, decent, underdogs up against the system (in this case the townsfolk). In a brave touch, the Russian in the film is never translated – Theodore Bikel doesn’t have a line in English – meaning we only gradually learn what is going on and why, as Arkin’s character explains things to Whittaker in stumbling half-English. Arkin is, by the way, the film’s prize asset, demonstrating excellent comic timing and delivering his dialogue in a parade of Russian and fumbling English (there is a great sequence where he earnestly tutors his men on how to pass as officials clearing the street, teaching them phrases just a few degrees incorrect that will make them stick out like sore thumbs as soon as they open their mouths).

The film is never quite funny enough though and Jewison’s direction neither tight nor taut enough to keep the farcical pace up. There are one too many wrong turns taken by the Russians, one too many narrative cul-de-sacs as townsfolk barrel up and down the streets. The whole film plays out like this, many of its effective comic performers among the townsfolk lost among a sea of people and faces. Arkin and Reiner get the most impact, because their scenes tend to make place in individual rooms in set-ups that let us clearly see their faces and appreciate their comic skills.

The Russians are Coming largely struggles to keep the pace up – the best of the Ealing comedies told their farce-tinged struggles between the little-guy and the system, or confusion between two fundamentally sympathetic groups, in about 90 minutes, and this feels heavily over-stretched at a little over two hours. That’s partly because of the political statements which the film dresses up as a sub-plots. A romance between John Philip Law’s Russian sailor and the Whittakers’ babysitter Tessie O’Shea is all too obviously a plea for using love as bridge-building. The final alliance between the Russians and the townspeople, forged in their joint rescuing of an endangered child, bangs the “we are all the same” drum a little too persistently.

It makes the film today feel a little too much like it’s trying to have its cake and eat it: to be both a farce where Reiner’s playwright gets tied up to a librarian and the two struggle to free themselves in a series of pratfalls, and also a political statement about the bonds that can be built if we just let the Cold War melt a little bit. I won’t deny this must have had more impact in the 1960s, but today it makes for a film that is a little too grandiose where it should be nimble, and a little too lightweight when it should be important.

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

The phenomenon of the 90s, this charming comedy still (rightly) lies in many people’s soft spot

Director: Mike Newell

Cast: Hugh Grant (Charles), Andie MacDowell (Carrie), Simon Callow (Gareth), Anna Chancellor (Henrietta), Charlotte Coleman (Scarlett), James Fleet (Tom), John Hannah (Matthew), Kristin Scott-Thomas (Fiona), David Bower (David), Rowan Atkinson (Father Gerald), David Haig (Bernard), Sophie Thompson (Lydia), Corin Redgrave (Hamish Banks), Simon Kunz (John), Rupert Vansittart (George)

It’s 1994 and love really is all around. It certainly felt like it in the UK, as Four Weddings and a Funeral went from small Brit rom-com to national phenomenon. It was number one at the box office for ten weeks and Wet Wet Wet’s Love is All Around felt like it was number one for the whole year. The film was a huge international hit, the sort of once-in-a-lifetime movie for everyone involved, culminating in an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. For anyone who went to the movies in the 90s, it feels like an old, familiar friend. And, leaving aside the inevitable backlash, it’s still witty, charming and fun today.

Based on writer Richard Curtis’ experience of attending a never-ending parade of weddings one year (we’ve all been there), we follow Charles (Hugh Grant) through a series of disastrously different weddings (and, of course, one moving funeral) while he tries to deal with the fact he’s fallen in love with American Carrie (Andie MacDowell) – and one of the weddings he attends is hers. Around him float a phalanx of loyal friends: gregarious Gareth (Simon Callow) and his loyal, utterly reliable partner Matthew (John Hannah), dimly posh Tom (James Fleet) and his arch sister Fiona (Kristin Scott-Thomas) and zany Scarlett (Charlotte Coleman). But, when the time comes for Charles to head down the aisle, who will he find waiting for him at the end?

Four Weddings works because it’s blessed with a series of talents at the peak of their powers. Richard Curtis has never written a film script that balances so perfectly excellent one-liners, sharply sketched, engaging characters and a perfect mix of pathos and belly-laughs. Mike Newell balances the comedy with just the right touch of drama, never allowing events to tip into sitcom territory. The cast are all pretty much selected perfectly. And above all, it turned out Hugh Grant was placed on earth to play the lead roles in Curtis comedies.

Before Four Weddings, Hugh Grant was almost completely unknown: a Merchant Ivory supporting player at best. After it, he would be almost indistinguishable in the public’s eye from Charles (he’d effectively play the same role three times again for Curtis). What Grant does in this film is simply phenomenal. Curtis’ dialogue and rhythm fits his style like a glove: not since Rowan Atkinson (who delivers a Peter Sellars like performance as a nervous and shy vicar at the other end of the comic spectrum from Grant’s mix of comedy and pained earnestness) had an actor clicked so much with Curtis. There is, perhaps, no skill harder than light comedy, but Grant is a master at it.

He turns socially awkward comedy into a thing of beauty (trapped at a table with a series of ex-girlfriends, he lets the smallest inflections telegraph his desire for the earth to swallow him). He has the subtlety to not overplay pratfalls or physical gags (look at the minimalist simplicity which he plays being trapped, hiding, in a cupboard while a recently married couple have noisy sex in the same room, his face a mix of pained embarrassment and longing for escape). Grant captures better than almost any actor alive a peculiar, self-deprecating British sense of humour, the quiet rabbit-in-the-headlight horror of saying the wrong thing. He even makes you love Charles (who, in many ways, is a self-obsessed git) because Grant is so effortlessly likeable, emitting rays of little-boy lost charm.

It also works because the film crams into it a hinterland of friendship and warmth. The chemistry between the company is pretty much spot-on – you never for one moment doubt these people are lifelong friends, despite the fact we learn nearly nothing about any of them over the course of the film (even Charles – what other film would not even tell us his job?). Each of the actors seizes their role with relish. Simon Callow got to explode with red-faced bonhomie and shaggy-faced camp in a way you suspect he had been dying to do his whole career. Kristin Scott-Thomas’ arch dryness and icy posture was leavened with just the right touch of romantic yearning and wit.

In fact, the whole cast were so perfectly cast they almost became destined to spend their whole lives struggling to break out of the moulds Four Weddings placed them in. James Fleet was so skilled at nice-but-dim sweeties like Tom, he had to grow a huge beard to get serious roles. John Hannah (extremely good, with the films much touching WH Auden inspired moment) took on playing a posh twit in The Mummy. Anna Chancellor was so born to play the strangely needy ‘Duckface’, Charles’ ex-girlfriend she jokes the first line of her obituary will be “Duckface dies”. Callow and Scott-Thomas would play versions of these roles several times over – and even being arrested for picking up a sex worker wouldn’t break the public perception of Grant being Charles.

Which is all a round-about way of saying everything works here, the magic alchemy of everyone being in the right place at the right time, and every single risk paying off. You can be slightly churlish and say Andie MacDowell lacks some of the charisma and comic skill the role of Carrie needs (it’s a Meg Ryan role), but her innocent Southern exterior is needed to make the scene of her recounting her serial shagging to Charles over a restaurant table land with as much comic force as it does.

That’s one of many comic set-pieces that just plain work. From the “fuck!”-filled opening montage, which sees Charles hare, late, to a wedding where he is the best man, via the film’s many social faux pas (“She is now my wife” has never been funnier), Atkinson’s malapropism-stuffed wedding service to the film’s final comic denouement at Charles’ wedding, it’s packed with laugh-out-loud moments. But, because the characters are so well-drawn, with just the right amount of reality, we also care as well. The funeral carries real emotional impact – not least due to Hannah’s beautiful delivery of the eulogy (and let’s not forget, few other mainstream movies were as open to homosexuality at the time as this one). And every character has moments of depth: even dim Tom has flashes of real emotional insight.

You can mock it in retrospect for moments like “is it raining, I hadn’t noticed” – but films like this don’t stumble into becoming cultural phenomena. They get there because, for one glorious moment, everything comes together the way it was meant to be. A great script got just the right approach, from a series of actors perfectly cast and marshalled by a director towards warm, genuine comedy. That’s why people continue to watch – and quote it – thirty years later and it still feels like love is all around it.