Nonureva Really Surprised!

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

mpan-65792 Hands down without an other flick coming in 2nd place. I will strive to have either disks or downloads freely available (whatever is the predominant format at such time} for any attendee who is twisted enough to want to see what it was that inspired and sustained me.

aramis-112-804880 Rich actor Peter Sellers and ultra-rich Beatle Ringo Starr star in a movie about the corrosive effects of money. They play a rich father and son who go around bribing people to do dumb things, to prove that everyone has their price.Just as with the much better movie, "Bowfinger," where mega-stars Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy show how hard it is to make it in Hollywood, it's at first a bit difficult to see over the sheer weight of hypocrisy of an anti-money flick headlining the (in real life) money-grubbing Sellers and a member of the Beatles, who by 1969 had been rolling in the stuff.Once one gets over that, one can enjoy the sheer awfulness of the movie. Well, it's not so much a movie as a series of vignettes where famous actors (mostly familiar faces in insular England) show up to make fools of themselves. Laurence Harvey performs a strip-tease Hamlet. Sellers' old "Goon Show" buddy Spike Milligan eats a parking ticket.The vignettes purport to show to what extremes people will go for money. It's all scripted, of course, so they did not really bribe Laurence Harvey or a traffic warden. It's just Terry Southern and his writing partners (including bits by future Pythons John Cleese and Graham Chapman) As they make their point early on, the rest of the movie is, as a carpenter friend of mine would say, "pounding wood." That is, the nail is driven in all the way and the job is done, but they keep hammering holes in the woodwork all around it.The sheer smarminess of it all makes the movie worth watching, in the way some people rubberneck at road accidents to see if there are any dead bodies. But for normal people, unless you are really a hard-core Sellers fan, it's difficult sitting through this psychedelic 1960s period piece. All the neat new tricks they tried with colors and cinematography that were "mod" and "far out" in that (thankfully) bygone age are now look cheap, tawdry and distracting. It's like looking at yourself in your high school yearbook and wondering what you were thinking with that hair and those clothes.Nevertheless, Sellers acts his little heart out (while Ringo looks like he's doing his part for extra credit). Some of the stars do superlative little turns. John Cleese earns a few honest laughs as a man with a Rembrandt Sellers' character wants to buy -- but only its nose, not the rest of it. In an auction, Sellers hams it up but Patrick Cargill is hilarious as the straight-laced auctioneer.By the time THE MAGIC Christian (an odd name for a cruise ship) leaves port, the movie has deteriorated to flashes of nonsense, livened by moments of sublime lunacy (for instance, the always watchable Rachel Welch doing her fifteen seconds in the ship's engine room -- which is powered by topless women pulling oars.) Basically, "The Magic Christian" takes 92 minutes to reiterate what the Bible said in ten words, "the love of money is the root of all evil." Here, no one really does evil (though Christopher Lee's inexplicable vampire/steward may be up to no good). Nearly all that's done is merely stupid. Some of it still earns a few chuckles, but most of it has that dread aura of something that "seemed like a good idea at the time."

Ali Catterall There was nothing subtle about the 1960s, and so it is with its cinema satire. The Magic Christian, adapted from the novel by Terry Southern and relocated from America to Britain is engagingly goofy at best, a clunkingly pretentious muddle at worst. The tagline does rather give the game away: "The Magic Christian is antiestablishmentarian, antibellum, antitrust, antiseptic, antibiotic, antisocial & antipasto." It's the sort of desperately whacky stuff you can imagine Goldie Hawn blurting out on 'Rowan And Martin's Laugh-In'.Sellers, in half-hearted Grytpype-Thynne mode, plays eccentric Sir Guy Grand KG, KC, CBE, who bumps into homeless bum Youngman (Starr) feeding the ducks in Hyde Park. The childless millionaire adopts him as an heir and enlists him in the family business. His business, very simply, is to determine whether anybody, regardless of position or authority, will literally do anything, however degrading, for hard cash - so exposing the hypocrisy of the British class system and the fragility of its sacred cows, while subverting received notions of morality and societal hierarchies. Ken Kesey and his pranksters did it with their acid tests, the Black Panthers by asserting their constitutional right to bear arms - the Grands by scattering banknotes into a huge vat of liquid effluence and inviting bowler hated city gents to dive in. "A bit literal, I suppose," observes Ringo, putting his finger on the very thing that makes this satire so grating.As with Southern's other novel-to-film adaptation Candy from 1968, it's essentially a series of picaresque vignettes linked around a central theme, featuring a bulging cast of comic actors and a screenplay betraying the presence of its additional 'materialists' John Cleese and Graham Chapman. Many of these scenarios do resemble unfinished Monty Python sketches, and the Python's "mouse problem" almost made the finished cut before being rejected by Sellers. Among other outrages, we see Laurence Harvey persuaded to strip during a performance of Hamlet's soliloquy; the Oxbridge Boat Race transformed into a sea battle; and the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship descend into chaos after the opponents start making out; as Harry Carpenter notes, the audience is "sickened by the absence of blood". The funniest moments include the introduction of an African panther into Crufts, who graphically chows down on the smaller, fluffier contestants (pure Chapman there); Cleese's stuffy Sotheby's man reduced to a quivering wreck after Sellers mutilates a priceless Rembrandt (having paid for it first, of course); and Spike Milligan's traffic warden bribed to eat his own parking ticket. "You needn't eat the plastic" soothes Sellers, as Milligan gulps the whole lot down. "I'm here every Thursday", calls Milligan after their retreating motor. "Let that be a lesson to you!"As with other British films from this period (Bedazzled, Work Is A Four Letter Word) The Magic Christian trades in a peculiarly English surrealism - where Lewis Carroll meets Thomas De Quincy and Jonathan Swift - exemplified by a near-incoherent third act set aboard a phoney cruise ship called The Magic Christian. It's here that the film descends into the kind of groovy psychedelic antics which might have had hippies giggling in the aisles, but haven't dated at all well. Ironically, for such a counter-culture icon, Southern's original novel (which was banned for a stretch under obscenity laws) doesn't feature these kind of freak-outs. Even so, there's fun to be had here too, such as the bizarre vision of Yul Brynner's drag queen coming on to a panicky Roman Polanski, and Raquel Welch's 'Priestess Of The Whip' presiding over a galley of topless slavegirls.Yet aside from these glorious (and largely uncredited cameos), few of the cast and crew emerge from this with much dignity. It's one of Sellers' least arresting roles - and probably one of Ringo's best, though admittedly he doesn't have to do very much except provide a laconic foil. Joe McGrath, who'd previously directed Pete and Dud's 'Not Only... But Also', along with Casino Royale and 30 Is A Dangerous Age, Cynthia, seems powerless to mould a decent film out of such wildly uneven material. To further sour the mix, Pete Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger, who perform the film's theme song, the Paul McCartney-penned 'Come And Get It' both committed suicide some years later.

intelearts A doodlebug of a movie that is required movie by those who want to understand the Sixties better - just don't expect to understand what is going on - a complete mi sh mash of satire and irreverent fun all played out in a series of sketches that are joined by hte characters of Sellers and Ringo Starr cavorting around.This is about as far from 50s British comedy and Ealing as its possible to get: surreal, surprising, cruel, vindictive, hilarious, and just plain weird in places.It lives up to its tag line of Antiestablishment etc; and looks and feels like Monty Python before Python and with more bite.while stretching the credibility and tolerance of the audience is places it is wild viewing - and can be enjoyed on many levels.Be in the mood and you'll have a riot...