The Birthday Party (1987) (TV)

Director:

Kenneth Ives

Writer:

Harold Pinter (writer)

Release Date:

21 June 1987 (UK)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Mystery

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Joan Plowright	...	Meg Bowles
Harold Pinter	...	Nat Goldberg
Kenneth Cranham	...	Stanley Webber
Colin Blakely	...	Shamus McCann
Julie Walters	...	Lulu
Robert Lang	...	Petey Bowles

Runtime:

110 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

No amount of effort could have saved this bleak, meaningless mess.

Harold Pinter is behind this pointless, pretentious, vastly overrated critics'-darling drivel. Like almost everything else this deluded Marxist (hence unsurprisingly a Milosevic and Saddam Hussein fan) ever wrote, there is dull monologue aplenty, characters that like to foam at the mouth i.e. get angry and loud for no sufficient reason, and no plot to speak of. To defend this kind of easy-to-write, almost stream-of-consciousness malarkey as being "character-driven drama" is the ultimate escape from reality that any severely and incurably denial-stricken sheep will resort to, just in order to defend their left-wing brother-in-arms. The typically confining Pinterian setting doesn't help either. If you're even slightly claustrophobic, you might find yourself feeling restless mere minutes into this dozy garbage.

This almost randomly put-together junk was meant to be a play hence it should have stayed a play. There is a reason why certain (one-dimensional) plays are performed in empty little theaters and not on the big screen - until, of course, some highly optimistic producer decides to boost both his ego and career by raking in an award or two for trying to spread the gospel of yet another useless anti-Western playwright by stretching his/her unintellectual crap all over the far-too-large canvas. Not only is BP minimalistic in its sets, but in its confused ideas, as well. Pinter was an undisciplined charlatan, and the fact that he won a Nobel Prize only underlines his worthlessness. Predictably enough, he used the occasion to "show off" his ignorance and stupidity by making the kind of Marxist speech that had the Nobel Prize jury wetting themselves with delight.

What a sad, sad day this was... Such a great loss to the world of bad movies and ridiculously overrated Leftist writers...