Rating: 
Summary: Tries not to be Stiff too hard!
Review: Facing old maid-hood at the ripe age of 22, young and fair Emily (Georgina Cates) is introduced to the black-suited, Latin-spouting bookworm Cedric Trilling (Robert Portal), a friend of her brother Edward (Samuel West). When sparks fail to fly (and Cedric is such a priss you'll wonder if he would rather be with Edward) the matriarch of the family, Aunt Agnes (Prunella Scales) packs everyone up for a holiday in Italy. Believing that a piece of England should always be with them, they also pack up the lawn and employ local "scum of the earth" handyman George (Sean Pertwee) to lug it, and a multitude of luggage, around. Stiff Upper Lips, on the whole, is a funny, but not hysterical, take on English period piece movies. It is slow paced.
Rating: 
Summary: Enchanting
Review: For those who get it, delightful. For those who don't....well, I'm sorry, but it's just not the movie's fault.
Rating:
Summary: Jolly good show, old chap
Review: Given the mixed reviews I read on the Amazon website about this one, I wasn't sure if it would be any good. Fortunately, though, I was pleasantly, nay, SIDE-SPLITTINGLY surprised! It was brilliant!
Don't be fooled into thinking this is just a parody of Merchant Ivory movies. It also pays extensive homage to Ken Russell's brilliant 'Lady Chatterley' as well, not to mention having a bit of a dig at Jane Eyre/Sense and Sensibility/et al.
You don't have to be a huge Merchant Ivory fan to like this, although it probably helps. Even though the last time I saw a Merchant Ivory movie was many years ago, I still got all the jokes in this. And even my boyfriend, who has never watched anything in the Merchant Ivory genre and probably never will, was falling about laughing. Some jokes are subtle, some are over the top and bawdy, but all are hilarious.
Prunella Scales and Peter Ustinov, two veteran actors at the top of their game, are absolutely wonderful in this, as are the rest of the cast.
Thoroughly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: How well do you know your British movies?
Review: Granted this isn't a high brow humor movie, but it isn't supposed to be. It is hysterical if you take it for what it is- a movie about sex that made fun of all the aspects of Merchant Ivory films and Masterpiece Theatre that needed to be laughed at. Some of the parodies were really very clever, my favorite being the Mouret Fanfare played on the sitar, while others were on the overdone side. On the whole though this movie is great if you're well versed in quite a bit of British film.
Rating:
Summary: "Eaton! Eaton!"
Review: I caught 'Stiff Upper Lips' on PBS tonight. It was the first time ever that I laughed my arse off watching 'Masterpiece Theatre.' (When the English lawn was unpacked from its crate and set up, in the middle of an Italian plaza, for a proper tea, I had to stick my fist in my mouth to keep from howling and waking the neighbors.) The plot is familiar enough, pieced together from various tedious English period dramas: Emily, a pretty old maid of 22 (Georgina Cates, from 'An Awfully Big Adventure'), and George, a strapping scum-of-the-earth, are denied true love because of (yawn) stifling social conventions and pretensions, as personified by some very funny stereotypes. Here, let's see if I can rattle them off: there is the prim auntie (Prunella Scales), the upper class twit with the teddy collection, the unctious vicar, the bloated India imperialist (Peter Ustinov), the fey academic fixated on epic poetry and dead languages -- why, there's even the dedicated butler who practices making face-less in the mirror. The long-running jokes about sexual repression are dead-on ("What ripping unmentionables you have!" coos Emily to George), and whenever the tension lets up -- that is, whenever sex is on -- one breathes a little sigh of relief knowing that the English are only human and occasionally do have their passions. (I used to wonder how they reproduced.) Come to think of it, this is the most and best I've seen of the English making babies since -- since -- well certainly not since I started watching 'Masterpiece Theatre.' If the movie is, as the reviewer before me complains, a trifle slow and at parts predictable, it's only the better to parody those godawful respectable Merchant Ivory soap operas. I can see why this self-deprecating humor might not appeal to American audiences used to the obvious (if wonderful) farce of Mel Brooks, but for Brits and others savvy to their dry dry wit and weary of Jane Austens and Kenneth Branaughs, 'Stiff Upper Lips' is a pure delight. Making it a bleeding shame that the video is priced at over 100$. Ah well. "As the poet Homer wrote..."
Rating:
Summary: Stiff Upper Lips is hilarious
Review: I thought this movie was hilarious. Being from the Fawlty Towers and Good Neighbors genre of humor myself. I was laughing out loud during many parts of the movie that indeed require following the plot and the characters. You couldn't watch this movie in between doing the laundry and cleaning out the refrigerator...but if you give it the attention it deserves, you will be well rewarded with laughter and a refreshed feeling that there are still funny movies being made.
Rating: 
Summary: Where comedy fears to tread
Review: If ever there was a genre ripe for parody, it is the Merchant Ivory school of film-making. If ever there was a film that failed so miserably to parody the genre, it is "Stiff Upper Lips", which makes "Scary Movie" seems like "Annie Hall". How very talented actors like Prunella Scales, Frank Finlay and Peter Ustinov (who deserves to be sent to Siberia for his performance) allow themselves to be part of this disaster is beyond comprehension. This movie has no redeeeming features whatsoever.
Rating:
Summary: Varoom with a view...
Review: The posh filmmaking of Merchant Ivory has always tried to be beautiful, quaint and literate. With many successes and failures to their name including COURTESANS OF BOMBAY, MAURICE, HOWARD'S END, THE REMAINS OF THE DAY and A ROOM WITH A VIEW, these films have also acquired something else. The have become the able subject of parody. STIFF UPPER LIPS accomplishes that to a certain extent with its clash between Merchant/Ivory and Zucker Borthers (TOP SECRET!) storytelling. It is designed for fans of the period literadramas, others will miss much of the humor and should look elsewhere for the evenings entertainment. Often times, the film is unsuccessful when it tackles elements of the Merchant Ivory films that were already parody in the films source or when the pacing parallels the same. Advertising for this film prepared the world (errr, very small world) for a bawdy ... comedy, which never hit the screen. There are sexual references, but they are far from bawdy. The performances are good especially Sean Pertwee as the idiotic brother George. The DVD has a standard audio/video transfer and offers a couple nice laughs.
Rating:
Summary: Varoom with a view...
Review: The posh filmmaking of Merchant Ivory has always tried to be beautiful, quaint and literate. With many successes and failures to their name including COURTESANS OF BOMBAY, MAURICE, HOWARD'S END, THE REMAINS OF THE DAY and A ROOM WITH A VIEW, these films have also acquired something else. The have become the able subject of parody. STIFF UPPER LIPS accomplishes that to a certain extent with its clash between Merchant/Ivory and Zucker Borthers (TOP SECRET!) storytelling. It is designed for fans of the period literadramas, others will miss much of the humor and should look elsewhere for the evenings entertainment. Often times, the film is unsuccessful when it tackles elements of the Merchant Ivory films that were already parody in the films source or when the pacing parallels the same. Advertising for this film prepared the world (errr, very small world) for a bawdy ... comedy, which never hit the screen. There are sexual references, but they are far from bawdy. The performances are good especially Sean Pertwee as the idiotic brother George. The DVD has a standard audio/video transfer and offers a couple nice laughs.
Rating: 
Summary: Funny but dirty
Review: There are some undeniably funny moments in this spoof of Merchant Ivory's lush literary films such as "A Room with a View" and "A Passage to India." Indeed, it was a genre that was ripe for a good parody. Peter Ustinov is especially funny as an English imperialist in India, who needs to sit on hunks of British lawn while he has tea. However, I found this movie to be so crammed with sex jokes that it bordered on the peurile. Certainly the sexual repression of the proper English movies was a good target for comedy, but I think this film goes a little overboard with its endless sex jokes until one wonders whether the writers have more than one string to their violin.
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