A Cock and Bull Story

Oh gosh, what a disappointment. Its something like that Peter Fonda "Tempest" set in the Bayou. It has the same fabric as the play's outer dressing and none of the muscle and blood of the thing.

Alas. One of our most intelligent filmmakers, someone who thinks about film and actually has new, clever ideas. Pay attention to "9 Songs" — if you can — and you'll be blown away. And one of our richest books. We don't have many in English, now that Ireland is a theme park for tourists. This book is not only folded in marvelous, manifold ways (many would say self- referential, but that's unduly limiting), it is a milestone in literature absolutely.

The problem with the film is aptly noted in the film. At some point, they decided that every effect, every narrative overlay, would be done for comic effect and no other. So. You'll find this amusing, slightly, with only one style of humor served up a couple different ways.

You will find better humor that plays with these notions elsewhere. At least, in true folded form, they tell us why in the film. Its because the guys in charge only understand "funny." There are some wonderful metabits where "deep" cinematic effect is brought up in discussions and the "guys in charge" are completely oblivious. It isn't like that opening scene in "The Player" where cinematic pretense is made fun of, and then ruthlessly exploited. No. Here the film really does ignore everything it was intended to be.

I'll have to wait, I suppose, for a Winterbottom project that has a less clever source, so he can add his own notions, rather than be faced with a warehouse of attitudes and only grab those on the bottom shelf.

Every scene with Naomie Harris is worth watching, in content and style. The rest, well, watch "The Company" instead if you just want to laugh, of "Singing Detective" if you want Shandy in film.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

One of the funniest and strangest films about the film-making process, this is less an adaptation of the novel, more a focused and hilarious deconstruction on Winterbottom's working methods. Coogan and Brydon are fantastic. The scene with Coogan and a hot chestnut down his trousers is worth the price of admission alone! Although the film may not be to everyone's taste - it darts around and has little respect for narrative logic or continuity (as does the book), it is a freeform little gem that really does cement Winterbottom's reputation as the most exciting British director out there. Any person who can make In This World, Code 46, 9 Songs and then this in a row is worthy of respect.

Tristram Shandy, the complex novel, by Laurence Sterne, comes to the screen thanks to the adaptation and direction of Micahel Winterbottom, a man that likes to take risks. The idea of mixing the goings on of a film being made based on the novel, and the people behind the project presents some original ideas about what goes on behind the scenes.

This film within a film, showcases the talents of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, two funny English comedians that haven't been seen much on this side of the Atlantic, but who are quite well known in the U.K.

The Sterne novel is just a pretext for making sense of the book, which presents tremendous challenge to the movie makers. On the one level we see the story of the birth of the hero of the novel, and on the other, we watch a somewhat conceited actor going through the process of the filming as he and the company socialize in a posh hotel.

The basic premise of the film presents a problem with American audiences drawn to the film by the good notices it received from the local critics. Judging the reaction of the audience the other day at the Angelika, one wonders if the film was understood as almost no laughter could be heard in response to some of the clever and funny things happening on the screen. In fact, it seems baffling to this viewer the response of what appeared to be an audience of mostly cool NYU students.

What Mr. Winterbottom gets is excellent acting from most of this multi talented cast. Steve Coogan, with his deadpan delivery, and Rob Brydon, his sidekick, come out as the winners. Their timing is impeccable and their chemistry is real. Some of the other people in the cast include Shirley Henderson, Stephen Fry, Kelly MacDonald, Ian Hart, Jeremy Northam, Naomie Harris, Gillian Anderson and some other talented English actors, too many to mention all.

The excellent musical score by Michael Nyman enhances all what we are watching. Marcel Zyskind's cinematography gives the right look to the film. Ultimately, all credit for making the film the fun it is goes to Michael Winterbottom.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy was published in the mid 1750s and can be described as postmodern before the term was invented.

The book is a ramble and regarded as unfilmable.

Enter Frank Cottrell Boyce and Michael Winterbottom. They are assisted by Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan who adapted the book as a film within a film of the book.

Anyone familiar with the BBC series The Trip, also directed by Winterbottom and starring Brydon and Coogan as versions of themselves will be acquainted with the set up.

They both tease, spar, cajole each other and do impressions.

You have scenes relating to the birth of Tristram Shandy and some of it is comical and amusing. You have a battle scene with literally tens of people and suddenly the filmmakers manage to get Gillian Anderson on board as Widow Wadman which leads to an increased budget

As the film goes on, Coogan's personal life comes under scrutiny with a newspaper hack chasing him about a kiss and tell story. Madchester TV stalwart and music mogul Tony Wilson appears as himself giving a testy interview to Coogan. Stephen Fry later drops by as a know it all.

By the latter part of the film it just fizzles out, as if the actual writer and director ran out of gas and this viewer lost interest.

Maybe there was a good reason why the novel was unfilmable.

A film so post-post-postmodern that Steve Coogan steps out of the screen and hits on your girlfriend in the theater lobby -- I won't say if this is true or not -- Tristram Shandy is a meticulously controlled work that, despite the film-within-a-film conceit, is very faithful to its impenetrable source. Just like Sterne's book, the engine of Winterbottom's film is bittersweet melancholy, but the engine noise, drowning out what some might consider to be a nihilistic message, is bawdy, music-hall, veddy veddy English humor.

For Americans to get anything out of this movie, you will need to understand a bit about both Tristram Shandy -- at least enough to know that Coogan is playing Shandy's FATHER and that Shandy himself is only the narrator -- and about Steve Coogan's mythology. For those who are too lazy, all you need to know is that Coogan doesn't have a reputation for being led around by his brain. I have briefly met him in person and found the experience uncanny. He is so fully what he is that he seems to have a force-field around him that separates him from the more amorphous mass of humanity. In the future, when you say the word "Coogan," it will instantly paint a picture of a certain type of male. A type that women are drawn to irresistibly, because he is both a child in need of mothering, a grown Linus Van Pelt perpetually clutching a security blanket, and aggressively sexual and dirty. He's the bad boy and the baby all rolled into one. And yet, far from being a jerk or a cad, he is intensely likable.

All of which goes to show that rarely has any actor been more perfect for a role than Coogan is here. Posing this hapless man-child next to a bull with a huge bazoing pretty much says it all. You see, Sterne is not a fan of the procreative arts ( and judging by his last few movies, neither is Winterbottom; "Everyone's kid is so special," says Samantha Morton in Code 46, "Makes you wonder where all the ordinary adults come from." ) The title character of Tristram Shandy remains famously unborn, and the only characters that Sterne truly loves, and who truly love each other, are a eunuch and a widow, all of which goes to show that Sterne considers death to be a blessing and human existence to be largely unnecessary, nothing but the byproduct of mindless sexual flare-ups that would be quickly forgotten except for the babies they produce, who in turn have more sexual flare-ups, and so on. In the film these flare-ups come courtesy of Steve Coogan, playing both himself as a father -- and constantly attempting to cheat on his wife, as he is famous for doing in real life; you may even recall the false alarm that he'd knocked up Courtney Love! -- and also the reluctant Shandy's paterfamilias. Between these two Johnny Appleseeds, both of whom look like Steve Coogan, entire planetary systems could be populated and repopulated.

The film is short, but dense -- every scene has so many dimensions that the end result fans out like a peacock's tail. There are infinite details to sift through in its 90 minute running time, and there is a very beautifully done telescoping of time periods to match Tristram Shandy's 18th-century milieu with that of Steve Coogan's and our own modern day. When Coogan haggles over a script in the lobby of a trendily underlit London hotel, you feel somehow transported back to Shandy's father's palatial home and its elegant candlelight. The central scene of the film comes when Coogan, escaping from a costume party where the 21st century briefly crashes into the 18th, tells his wife: "I just had a nightmare." That nightmare is called our world, reality, human as opposed to divine love, the world controlled by time yet where nothing really changes except the clothes and the hairstyles, and that, despite its obvious wretchedness and pain, people are too afraid to give up; yes, the very same "cock and bull story" of the title. It is not every comedian who has something to say about the human comedy. But Coogan certainly does, under Michael Winterbottom's expert and disillusioned hand.