Rating: 
Summary: Withnail & I - Excellent Time Piece
Review: This is either a 3-star or 5-star movie, depending on where you are coming from. One has to be somewhat familiar with the period to truly appreciate the backdrop, but all should recognize the quality of the performance. Set in London and the English countryside, the movie portrays a moment in the life of two out-of-work actors during the end of the hippie era, or the British equivalent thereof. The film is basically a collection of character sketches with some exceedingly well acted roles. Although filled with outrageous and mordant wit, the underlying story is sad portraying the eventual success of the less outgoing, but better adapted Marwood (Paul McGann), while the disgraceful Withnail (Richard Grant) is left in his self-made misery. Richard Griffiths, gives a truly outstanding portrayal of Monty, Withnail's affluent, overweight and gay uncle. Often overlooked, is the immensely talented portrayal of Danny (the drug dealer) by Ralph Brown - who makes one wonder if the scenes were acted, or real. This is the genuine article. Experience the time warp by watching it, and one can understand why it has generated such a cult following in Europe, and beyond.
Rating:
Summary: You've missed the point!
Review: 'Withnail & I' depicts a bief spell in the lives of 2 60's veterans in a soon-to-be-dead decade, It's a sadistic tale of trauma and tragedy that lays beneath the all too common smokescreen of comedy. Both of the charactors are consumed by the ideals of a decade that saw more victims than any war. The two out-of-work actors visit the countryside in order to rejuvinate from their lack of success. The lines are hilarious and one who watches this film once will miss the point and miss the chance to be educated, which this film is far capable of doing. I urge anyone who would like meaning from their comedy to watch this film so long as you don't miss the point.
Rating:
Summary: All in All, The Way Forward
Review: Quite frankly this is the greatest tragi-comic film of all time. The image of Richard E. Grant swigging from a bottle of claret, watching caged wolves and so-on and so-forth, moves me to tears. Bruce Robinson, 'I love you and want to bear your little babies'. And as for Uncle Monty, well isn't he delicious? The only thing that could add to my already replete viewing ecstacy, would be for this to be brought out on DVD; so please, chaps, do it for me. All in all, at the end of the day, Withnail and I is the way forward...
Rating:
Summary: easier than blowing your mind on acid
Review: I wondered what it was I was getting myself into, buying this because somebody gushed to me. No regrets here. By the time you're done you feel like you've been engaged in an excess of debauchery for days on end -- and you don't have to ruin your chromosomes or your chance of running for political office to get there!
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Summary: The finest English film available to humanity.
Review: For someone who wants to burn "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and HATED Trainspotting with a vengenance, I am mortified to admit that this film is sheer (expletive deleted) brilliance. It is squalid, gruesome, disturbing and nauseating - and EXTREMELY funny, and abso-blooming-lutely wonderful. Richard E Grant, Paul McGann, and the rest of the actors were perfectly cast, the film was so well set up and directed, and it... it is just so earthy and real. It doesn't make me want to run out and get hold of a Camberwell Carrot, or even a nice, firm, younng carrot, but when I first saw it, aged 16, I was dumbstruck. It was everything I normally hated. It was hysterically funny. I LOVED it! I wanted so much to be Marwood (that's what I's name is in the script) and to have had such experiences, to have known Withnail and his mad cronies. Gosh... Have I written this review by MISTAKE? There's far too much to be said about this film. I honestly think that it's one of the BEST films of the last 20 years.
Rating:
Summary: "The greatest decade in the history of mankind...
Review: ...is over. And as presuming Ed here has so consistently pointed out, we are foul to paint it black." So says "Danny," the Delphic Oracle of the film, and this is the nut. For anyone who has ever looked back at the demise of the counter-cultural movements of the 1960's and felt sadness at their disintegration and subsumption by the forces of corporate marketing mass mind-control, this movie is for you. Yes, it's a comedy, and like all great comedies, it's drama works best because the humor of the story throws the drama into such sharp relief. If you've ever chased after your dreams with drugs, and found yourself tattered and broken at the end of a long road of pain and loss, this movie will reach you. If you've never used your food money for the week to buy booze or drugs for the day, if you've never been afraid of the multilayered quagmire of standing water, dishes and unidentifiable matter in your sink, then you will miss a lot of what this movie has to offer. If you've ever had a dream, and had to watch it die knowing that it was your own bungling that killed it, then this movie will reach your heart. And if you've ever gotten so stoned with your friends that you all searched your apartment for twenty minutes for the keys that were in your hand the whole time, you will find a lot to laugh at in this movie. Once again, Richard E. Grant scores a bullseye. His Withnail is every drowning loser left at the end of a voyage undertaken with high hopes, caught in a storm watching the waters close over his head, "making an enemy of (his) own future," "drifting into the arena of the unwell." If you've ever looked at life, with its wages and cubicles and sports, its schedules and its rules, no place to hang your hat and be let alone but that you must pay someone rent, and felt like something was wrong, something must be missing, you will understand Withnail's terrible, desperate compulsion to stand on the throttle and blast through one disaster after another. I never "got" Shakespear until I watched this movie. If you don't get anything else from Withnail & I, at least try to embrace the Hamlet soliloquy at the movie's end. Maybe you've never been troubled by a feeling that life is empty and tedious. And maybe you've seen those people who do seem to see life that way, and not understood why. The answer for you is in that speech at the movie's end. Danny says, "When you're hanging on to a rising balloon, you're presented with two choices; either let go or hang on which brings up the question of how long you can keep your grip on the rope?" How terrible it must be to have been involved in the hippie subculture in the sixties, and to have to watch it die in the seventies. In his able and compelling epitaph of the 1960's, Hunter S. Thompson put it best when he said, "San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there, and alive, in that corner of time in the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right--that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense--we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest of a high, and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west. And with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the highwater mark--that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back." Semper Fidelis, Montague Withnail.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie! Wonderful characters and very funny.
Review: I not only laughed but really felt that these characters were real. One of those movies that got lost in time, but it's timeless. Great performances by all involved. Reminds me a lot of Dogs in Space but with more humor and the British flair. Both movies deserve a good DVD treatment.
Rating:
Summary: A spell-binding exercise in drunken triviality
Review: Bruce Robinson's semi-autobiographical film is testament to his biting tongue; just as Kevin Smith's Clerks, the film has practically no plot. We simply view the drunken exploits of Marwood (a typically anxious McGann), and Withnail (the ferocious Grant). Fundamentally, the film is constructed around set pieces, all universally connected by the sozzled diatribes of Grant. Withnail and I is a film that will mesmerize you my the sheer chaos and inebriated mayhem that ensures.
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Summary: i want to be buried with a copy
Review: if you have not seen this movie you have not yet begun to liv
Rating:
Summary: A must see !!!
Review: Well, definately my favourite film of all time. I never get tired of watching it and have a great laugh everytime I see it. Brilliant acting and a hilarious script. Funny,funny,funny. Watch it with a couple of cans for pure entertainment and a good laugh.
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