Yesterday Patty thought we needed a break, so she went to youtube and found us one of the funniest movies we’ve ever seen.
Clockwise (1986) stars John Cleese as Mr. Stimson, a headmaster at an English public school. In his youth, Mr. Stimson had a terrible problem managing time. He overcame it by becoming a pompous control freak obsessed with being on time, and has just been elected chairman of a national headmasters’ conference.
The premise is simple: Stimson has to go to the conference and give a speech. What ensues is a bizarre train of errors, each one worse than the last, as Stimson tries to make it to the conference on time. The cast is chock-full of persons you’ve already seen in many British sitcoms: Geoffrey Palmer (As Time Goes By), Stephen Moore (The Thin Blue Line), Anne Way and Pat Keen (Fawltey Towers), and Joan Hickson (Miss Marple, plus assorted Carry On movies), and several others. And they are all at their best! No one ever babbled and dithered better than Joan Hickson.
You’d think it’d be a fairly straightforward errand, to go to a conference and give a speech–but you wouldn’t believe how complicated it gets. It’s like one of those nightmares in which your feet stick to the ground, you lose your clothes, the police are looking for you, and so on. Those things aren’t so funny when they happen to you, but they’re a scream when they happen to John Cleese.
Laughter is one of God’s gifts, and not the least of them. And this film will give you barrels of it. Try it, you’ll like it.
LEE,
NO OFFENSE, BUT PLEASE KNOW THAT THE EXPRESSION IS “EACH ONE WORSE THAN THE LAST”. A MAN OF YOUR INTELLIGENCE MUST AND SHOULD BE ABLE TO CONVEY THE CONCEPT OF ASCENDING ORDER IN ANALOGIES TO THE PHYSICAL WORLD CORRECTLY. THANKS.
PS, LOVE YOUR PIECES
PPS I CAN SING THAT COMPLETE CASTRO CONVERTIBLE JINGLE RIGHT NOW. LOVED IT!
PPS. I WAS THE KID WHO SANK INTO THE SWAMP ON THE NOT-QUITE-BUOYANT-ENOUGH PALLET-WITH-TIRES IN EDGAR WOODS THAT DAY!
Fap! I thought I’d fixed that!
Come to think about it, there was a Greco family in our neighborhood back then, with a bunch of boys of all ages. You weren’t one of them, were you?
I hope to view this later tonight. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Let me know how you like it.
Will do. Cleese is a great comic actor. He can play the starchy, self-important clown better than anyone I have ever seen.
I just finished. The comedy was great, a farce generously slathered in traditional British propriety. No one makes fun of the British more skillfully than the British themselves. The plot managed to deliver its comedy without resorting to anything cheap or vulgar. My grandmother would have approved, yet it was anything but stodgy.
What I enjoyed even more than the plot, was the beauty of the British countryside. Britain has great natural beauty and has lovely buildings that compliment their setting. While I doubt that I’ll be visiting anytime soon, I would love to see Britain’s beauty firsthand. It contributed greatly to the plot, all of that natural beauty was the perfect contrast to the comedic chaos of the plot.