Leon the Pig Farmer

Very Simply this is my candidate for "Worst film ever made". It even makes Magnolia vaguely palatable. Stay clear if you see this on a video store shelf. There are many better ways to lose 90 minutes of your life than watch this.

Very enjoyable, funny, quirky and a little odd. All in all an entertaining way to waste an hour and a half or so. It's starting to look a little dated however, this does not detract from what is a very entertaining film. There are a lot of films brit flicks that are more highly rated and nowhere near as good.

What's the point of this small gem?

It's about Leon (getting to know to) being somewhat different, based on his ancestry in contrast to the environment and society he lives, just because of some information, that doesn't necessarily need to influence his life, but still manages to push him into a process of self discovery.

While the first half shows Leons life as a modern jew, maybe comparable to how "The Nanny" did, later on. This culture gives the movie some known, solid background, but the story could get transposed to combinations of cultures and societies, without losing its statement.

Leons real struggle turns around his two lovers: one girl dreaming of an exciting partner and therefore not willing to commit to him, another one, that just loves to scandalize in her art and her loving.

The second half comes up with the absurd twist of the (impossible) hybrid being (which is never shown), making it a kind of allegory for Leon and starting some discussions, where british comedies do excel.

Apart from Conny Booth (Fawlty Towers!), Maryam D'Abo (fresh from the Bond) and (the then lesser known?) Gina Bellman the cast bears no big names, but overall matching, sympathetic acting. The pace of the story runs smooth.

I give it a 7, because it proves decent movie can be made with minimum fundings.

When even Woody Allen seems to have given up making overtly Jewish movies, Leon is a novelty. OK, some of the comedy borders on stereotype, but, I can tell you from experience, it's still true. The confusions of identity, culture, heritage etc are a ready source of sardonic wit. And it's not just a film for Jewish people either - anybody with experience of cultures centred around insane families will appreciate it. In my circle, Indians, Italians and the Irish seem to have a particular affinity. On a sadder note, the film features mark Frankel, whose untimely death was potentially a major loss to the Brit industry.

A young Jew, who was confused enough about what kind of person he was already, discovers that he is in fact the result of artificial insemination, and that his biological father is a Yorkshire pig farmer. So of course he has to agonise about things, and so do one or two other people. Now that I come to think of it, so does everybody.

It's a comedy and I didn't get any of the jokes. -Oh, I UNDERSTOOD the jokes, well enough - it's not as if they rely on the more obscure aspects of Jewish theology or culture. (Maybe some of them did. These would have been the jokes I didn't understand; indeed, didn't even notice.) I admit that there was this one guy in the cinema who chuckled every so often and he seemed to disprove my theory that one must actually be a Jew in order to find this film amusing. He didn't LOOK Jewish.

That's about the kind of joke you can expect.

If you don't find any of it funny enough to actually laugh at, and to be frank I don't see how you could, there's still something endearing about the oddness of it all. I never worked out if I was meant to be laughing at the central character's angst or angsting along with him. I did neither: but I found myself liking him all the same.