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Really masterpiece , never forgot this film and very funny

I was looking forward to this film, because I'm a big fan of Tom Sharpe's novels. At the same time I was rather apprehensive as well. This is a comedy, and comedy movies are made these days with a family audience in mind. Tom Sharpe's novel Wilt certainly does not fit into this bracket and so I expected some dreaded compromises.

Inevitably, they came. Of course, the film still has a US R-rating and a UK 15 rating, but this has more to do with the intrinsic adult nature of the basic material than with the film makers' attempts to preserve the spirit of the novel. The whole thing still felt much too sanitised, too toned down, too understated. Part of the problem might have been that filming faithfully the original story would have made some middle-aged established actors and actresses occasionally prance around in the buff, simulate drug abuse, and molest each other, but the story really needed a higher dosage of excessiveness.

Attempts to launch TV comedians on the big screen are usually about as appetising as cold sago, but this adaptation of Tom Sharpe's novel generally manages to buck that trend.

Gryff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith both play characters who have professionally reached an impasse: Jones plays a grade 2 humanities lecturer whose been reduced to teaching Liberal Studies to football hooligans at the University of Mid Anglia, while Smith plays a frustrated detective who yearns to nail Jones as the Swaffham Stranger.

Like countless British comedies of yore the film affords the pleasure of plenty of familiar faces (including a strikingly young and slim Roger Allam), although the four-letter words are rather out of place (and I don't recall Charles Hawtrey ever sharing the screen with an inflatable doll).

The first time I saw Wilt was in the cinema and laughed so hard that had tears in my eyes. I think I most enjoy this movie because it reminds me of the classic English humour, unfortunately not too frequent nowadays, at least as far as I am concerned. Some years later I was luckily enough to be able to tape it from TV and laughs were back.

I haven't seen any people who act in this film elsewhere, but that does not discourage me from being fond of their job. The man who plays the hapless Wilt is kind of funny, and inspector Flint's character is hilarious as well. Eva Wilt is a complete puppet at Sally's will, who turns out to be a bitch/slut.

The entire script is hysterical. My favorite parts are those in Sally's party, when she ties Wilt to that inflatable dolly and both appear in the main lounge, causing the dj to announce there is a wedding engagement coming. Also when Wilt talks the police into believing he has turned his wife's corpse to pieces of meat that have been put into cans of food and panic takes them over, prompting them to start checking the cans. How about when he is driving home from the party and the dolly surfaces behind in? Then he stops and goes insane by stabbing the dolly yelling something like "Explode, cow!".

As it's been pointed above, an hysterical movie. Pick it if you wanna pass one and a half hours of nonstop fun. Ten out of ten.

But I didn't. Watching it again 23 years after release ( omg where did that time go ! ) -

I loved the book and the film is good at matching the general rule of not being as good as the book. But this time I've watched it with the book as a distant memory and I have to say I enjoyed the film .

OK things look a bit dated and the 80s fashion looks laughable but that just adds to the humour . My only disappointment and wish is that they made the remaining WILT books into films too .

The casting of Smith & Jones into the lead male roles is genius and Alison Steadman plays the overbearing wife to a 't' . Watch it with LOW expectations and you'll enjoy it :) -Pad.A