O'Toole is Jack Gurney, the 14th Earl of Gurney. His father died under bizarre circumstances, making Jack the next Earl. The only problem? Jack believes he is God.
I have a feeling that O'Toole had fun with his performance. Having only seen Lawrence of Arabia, it was nice to see him in a less restricted role. He bursts into song and dance numbers, hangs out on a giant cross and basically gets goofier one scene after the other. In short, he is awesome. He also wins for having the best lines, like this one: "When I pray to Him, I find I am talking to myself."
Yes, some of the jokes are perverse and/or silly, but they're also funny as hell. Ridiculous as most of the movie is, I really liked it. Oh, and if you didn't understand some of the review, that's a sign saying you need to watch The Ruling Class.
My Rating: ****1/2
this is my favorite of all the Peter O'Toole performances I've seen (which is a lot).
ReplyDeleteI didn't like this one as much as you, it felt very uneven and the humour often fell flat for me, I would have preferred a darker comedy to be honest.
ReplyDeletegreat review though, and I agree, O'Toole was fantastic!
The one thing I think this movie does well is play on our notions of sanity, and obsession with maintaining 'norm' - also O'Toole delivers some of the best one-liners ever.
ReplyDelete