Eat the Rich

I remember seeing a trailer for this film back up in Buffalo, NY, and then never seeing it come to a theater. At the time my first two thoughts were, "What the Hell is this?" and then, "This looks like something to watch!"

Three years later, I stumbled across a VHS copy of it in a bargain bin of Record Theater, and snapped it up for $2. Being cheap, it's one of those rare occasions where I figured that I got more than my money's worth.

This film is truly different. It constantly flips between well constructed and paced scenes, to a variety of cheap countryside scenes that connected a lot of the main characters. It feels like they ran short of money and spent a day filming a lot of quick scenes to try and make the movie fit together.

Now don't let that stop you from watching it, and many of the scenes are unforgettable, but the film does slow down every time the action shifts out of London. If you can get through that, and Jimmy's annoying jokes, then you'll see a film that really is unlike any other I've come across.

OK, real quick, a correction of someone else's review:

1. Brian Johnson of AC/DC is NOT in this movie.

2. The song in the employment office scene is 'Nothing Up My Sleeves', not 'Ace of Spades.' Having said that...

The film is definitely not for everyone, but for being a small film with a small budget and mostly television actors, its really not bad. The humor is often subtle and easy to miss if you don't pay attention. There's a lot of cameos ranging from 3 of the 4 'Young Ones' stars to Sir Paul McCartney, which just makes the movie weirder, like 'What the %%%% is HE doing in THIS??' Overall its not a bad movie, just don't rent it expecting 'Gone With the Wind.'

Set in fascist London, a group of non-relative, broken yet hopeful vagabonds find each other and attempt to restructure society into a single humane unit. When that fails they shoot people full of arrows and cause a smart and accurate assault on the posh structures of politics and upper class snobbery.

There are many parallels to Robin Hood and layers of Political strife that almost get buried under snide John Waters-esque humor and fantastic visual imagery not unlike Sid and Nancy or The Young Ones. The characters are well developed and provide a full range of personalities to keep the film moving and entertaining. It could use a minor editing job to remove some excess footage that slows down the first 1/2hour, other than that this should be an 80's cult classic for alternative humor. For those that liked "the Cook/thief/wife/lover"---this is better and doesn't seep in frivolity.

Set in London, this is an anarchic satire on the consumerist yuppiedom of the Thatcherite 1980s. Written by and featuring the cast of The Comic Strip series, the film could be a Who's Who of the 1980s UK show business. All credit to them for getting people such as Paul McCartney, Bill Wyman and Koo Stark and Motorhead who contribute much of the soundtrack.

Director Peter Richardson creates the restaurant (the IMDb does not permit me to mention its name) in which much of the action takes place and the feasting of the patrons and their behaviour as they stuff their faces is a metaphor for the excesses of the 1980s but the film does show the ugliness of all levels of society.

The film is a bit uneven in its pacing but maybe this was intentional as the frenetic pace of the city is offset by a rather pedestrian pace when the location changes to the countryside. Overall though, the film is of its time and with the screen filled with celebrities of those days, some forgotten, some who made it big, this film deserves repeated viewing, even if it is only to play spot the celebrity.

An indictment on everything wrong with the thatcherite thinking of the day, this film explores the deepest recesses of the mind - probing into areas previously thought taboo by mainstream cinema.

Hilarious & sad - Ugly & Bad.

You have go to see this!

(even if just for the Motorhead soundtrack)