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13 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
British Comedy Gem, 11 December 2005
10/10
Author: jimdoyle111 from United Kingdom

I was lucky enough to discuss this film with David Frost in 2005 and it is a film he is still (he was the producer) very proud of, citing it as one of Peter Cook's best works.

The film was given a very limited release in 1970. I saw it in the Cosmo Cinema in Glasgow in 1970 and fell off my seat laughing - the first time I have ever done that in a cinema - and I was not the only one. The Cosmo by the way (now the Glasgow Film Theatre) was a specialist cinema which attracted intellectuals and serious film students, so they clearly saw the importance of this film from the word go and it is such a shame that Warner Brothers are unable to do the same and recognise this as an important historical film document.

The film disappeared and has only been shown on TV 3 times - originally shown on ITV in 1979 by various channels who usually used it to pad out their late night schedules - and the version I taped then runs about 8 minutes short. It has also been shown on Channel 5 twice and they have made less cuts, but there is still some material missing which is why it needs to be issued on DVD with care and by someone who knows the film well and understands its importance to fans of John Cleese, Peter Cook, Monty Python - and 60s British comedy.

Another perspective is that Michael Rimmer is essentially Tony Blair, so this film predicts presidential style UK politics and spin and contrasts it with old fashioned Labour thud and blunder with Harold Wilson lookalike George A Cooper in his best ever role.

This should be compulsory viewing for all political students and if you liked the "Yes Minister" TV series, chances are you will very much enjoy this.

Post Mortem Since I wrote the initial comment above, the DVD has been released complete with director commentary - and I still find this an incredibly funny film all these years later.

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8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Why is this film not available?, 21 April 2005
9/10
Author: noren-3 from Japan

Saw this wondrous film when it first came out in London. I was at college and loved it immediately. It appealed to me cause it confirmed many prejudices and worries about Brit politics: manipulation, polls, spin.

It was way ahead of its time. Both funny and serious. The fact that it has not been available suggests that some of its points are too close to the truth for the 'establishment.'

I would love to see the scene again when the capsule is hidden in the hankie. He is meant to smash it which will cause a tear. It doesn't quite go as intended.

A brilliant film.

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10 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Ahead of its time, yet too late., 23 April 2002
Author: heathblair from London, England

A mysterious, charismatic figure (possibly another incarnation of Cook's George Spiggot Devil character from 'Bedazzled') appears from nowhere and takes over a small advertising agency. Through a series of ruthless strategies (media manipulation, political chicanery, blackmail, bribery and murder) he attains huge public notoriety and rises to the heights of government and beyond.

With its amazing cast of contemporaneous British comedy actors and a script by Peter Cook, John Cleese and Graham Chapman, the film should have been a satirical classic. The fact that it isn't, and indeed has virtually disappeared, is mainly due to the very brilliance of its creators. The sketch-show dynamic and satiric insight with which they dominated television comedy and theatre revue does not translates well to the cinema. Here it appears as an unfocused and fragmented ramble.

Rather than create a set of rounded characters which might withstand big-screen scrutiny, Cook and company resort to what they know best - caricatures. Accurate caricatures though they are, these are not 'people' but conduits and Aunt Sallys for the film-maker's understandable exasperation.

Peter Cook never looked so urbane and strikingly handsome as Michael Rimmer: a charming manipulator whose every utterance is a covert announcement of his smoothly diabolical strategy. Cook plays the role like a kind of malevolent mannequin. Grinning and mechanical. It was a deliberate move on his part and quite brave. But the viewer soon craves for him to break cover, show a crack in the veneer, display some vulnerability to connect with. It never happens. Rimmer is no Richard III. Maybe that's the way Cook regarded such power-players: passionless shells of men with nothing but their ambition to drive them. Unfortunately, the film itself takes on these very aspects and becomes heartless and mechanical.

The script is also not funny enough. The intimidation of writing for the big screen seems to have severely compromised the talents of the writers. Many of the jokes are forced and frequently fall back on tits-and-arse sight-gags (an unhappy irony as the film is highly critical of the use of sex by advertisers to sell useless products. A severe case of "having your cake and eating it").

A lot of the minor players ham it up to grab laughs in that peculiarly loud, desperate, English rep-company manner. However, it is a truly wonderful thing to behold Peter Cook, Denholm Elliot and the great Harold Pinter (as an fantastically smarmy TV talk-show host) appearing in the same frame trying to out-smarm each other. It's a three way draw. Brilliant.

Yes, there are some good things. Kevin Billington has a nice eye for composition (but he can't do a thing with the fractured narrative). Alex Thompson's camera-work is excellent and imparts a sense of real cinema. The film's insight into the cynical manipulation of the media by politicians seems even more prescient today. But ultimately, it all fails to gel.

Perhaps it came too late in the cycle of British satirical comedy to really get everyone's blood moving. Cleese and Chapman moved on rapidly to the ground-breaking surrealism of Monty Python, and David Frost, the film's co-producer, dived headlong into a lucrative career as a talk-show host and professional jet-setter. But Cook's hopes for becoming a major movie star were destroyed by the film's failure. Apart from sporadic periods of greatness (re-uniting with Dudley Moore etc), he basically drank himself to death over the next twenty-five years. A sad conclusion to a great comedian's life.

The film is worth seeing if for no other reason than to witness a snapshot of British comedy before it flew into a very different orbit.

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
And so Spin was Invented, 6 March 2006
10/10
Author: wild_pepsi_child from United Kingdom

It is a real shame that this film has not been released on DVD or even VHS. The remarkable thing about it is that even though it has been aired so few times, its imagery is so immediately fresh in the mind, from the bumbling assassination attempts in a JFK style by Arthur Lowe, to the 'First British Gold Bar' extracted from the north sea.

This film is about manipulation and orchestration from the start to the end !! done with a very dry and British style sense of humour.

The manipulation and 'Spin' of the Political Party Broadcast filming - who could not forget the scene with the rotating countryside backdrop and tread mill - BRILLIANT!! The guile of a Prime Minister who offers the nation the right to decide on every issue -with the piles of paper work such referendums incurred - to the ultimate presidential / dictatorship power gained from the final referendum.

The film as many people have mentioned before may not have a plot, in fact it is more like a documentary at times, but it is wholly unimportant. Its content is a precise satire of the government and issues at the time of production - preceding the change to decimalization - entry into the EU and the discovery of oil in the North sea, the general feeling of social discontent and mistrust in Government that was brewing and what would almost prophetically occur several years later.

One possible reason for its lack of public viewing could be because Peter Cooks brilliant genius cut close to the bone, unashamedly attacking the political processes and media circuses that surround general elections and political manifesto.

Without any doubt if this film was ever released on DVD I would have to buy at least 3 copies.

If there was ever a point in history were spin doctor politics was defined - look no further than this film for it origins.

A monument to Peter Cook and a host of brilliant British comedy actors.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Presient Political Satire, 21 June 2006
10/10
Author: ProfessorStahlman from United Kingdom

I saw this on late-night television in the '70's, and as well as making me laugh out loud it also made me think. You cannot say that about modern British comedies.

Rimmer is an enigma, not evil, just amoral. He could be George Spiggot from 'Bedazzled', making good on his threat to ruin the world. Cook might not have been much of an actor, but in this he's great. And what a stunning supporting cast!

Kevin Billington's contribution to the script is difficult to ascertain because it bears all the hallmarks of Cleese, Chapman and Cook, particularly with its sharp digs at the worlds of advertising, market research, public relations and politics. To give an example, when Rimmer reminds the Tory P.M. of his promise to increase pensions, he gets the the reply: "My dear boy, we normally say that the economy is in a ghastly mess, and blame it all on the last lot!".

With Tory leader David Cameron currently trying to smarm his way into No.10, using similar tactics to Rimmer's, the timing for a D.V.D. release could not be better. Highly recommended.

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
A throughly brilliant satire on Britain going into the 1970s, 22 July 2007
9/10
Author: DBloodnok from United Kingdom

This movie is an excellent political satire but it's equally a satire on the State of the Nation in 1970. This was a time when people in the UK really feared that the nation was doomed. In one way, the small advertising company to which Rimmer is sent as a 'time and motion' man symbolises Britain at the end of the 1960s. The place is falling down, the staff don't care, the management is flabby and complacent. Note the fire extinguishers dotted about marked up 'DO NOT USE AFTER 1958' - and yet there they are, still in use. The staff toilets are dirty and ill-maintained - the roll towel is broken, the doors do not lock. All in all, a dystopia that is not fit for purpose. It's hard for a contemporary audience to understand this fully, but don't forget that this film was released just three years before serious opinion in Britain asked the question 'Is this country ungovernable?' and there was dark talk of a possible military coup. A distant country now, nicely represented in this great movie.

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the best satirical films I have ever seen., 6 July 1999
10/10
Author: Brad Jackson from Yorkshire, England

This film was shown recently on Channel 5 in the UK. Basically, a young official looking man with a clipboard, Michael Rimmer (Peter Cook) walks into a dead beat polling company - and begins to change it dramatically. Very soon, the company is a thrusting dynamic organisation - with Michael Rimmer as it's head. He is loved by everyone, and he can manipulate people easily. He then begins to move into politics, and rises very quickly up to Prime Minister. It is then that his true motives begin to appear - he wants to be President of Great Britain. Will he succeed? Of course, he's Michael Rimmer. Watch this film and be amazed. Don't be concerned if you find you rewind it and watch it all over again. It is superb.

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
In praise of "Michael Rimmer", 13 April 2001
10/10
Author: ratty1943 from Sydney, Ausrtalia

This is a brilliant British political satire. Along with "Bedazzled" and "The Wrong Box", this must be rated with Peter Cook's best Work. The supporting cast is superb. I hope that it will be released on video one day soon. I would love to have a copy.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Great Movie-Political Spoof, 30 June 1999
10/10
Author: Mike Chappell (mike.chappell@which.net) from Marlborough, England

I saw this film in a local film club and loved it. It is the story of a market research person (Peter Cook / Michael Rimmer) who comes from nowhere and proceeds to become Prime minister and in the end Dictator of the UK.

He even selects his bride by market research and pushes the existing PM from an Oil platform in order to take his job.

In the end he rules by survey until people get fed up and in a final survey decide to leave all the decisions to Rimmer.

A lot of the scenes were filmed at Brunel University (as was Clockwork Orange and numerous TV episodes ie Avengers, Sweeney due to its proximity (Uxbridge) to the studios.

If you get a chance see it, and tell me where to get a copy!!

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Still up to date 30 years on, 3 December 2005
8/10
Author: AGHOGG-1 from Edinburgh, Scotland

I find it hard to believe that this film has not had a greater showing on television than it has. I can only recall one showing on British TV in the last few years and it definitely deserves more. This is not to say it is a brilliant film, although I think it's pretty good, but it really needs to be seen in the context of modern day politics. Its still "bang on the nail" relevant and you can either be worried about lack of progress in politics or society, or marvel at how far ahead of its time it was.

The plot is a bit lacking in focus, sub-plots involving Rimmer's romance with his girlfriend, and the duplicity of his political partner are distracting and are really padding for a concept that isn't really film length. However, these are minor foibles in what I think is a well written political satire which is a must see for anyone who thinks modern politics boring – this might just get you thinking.

And it's funny as well.

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