Withnail & I **** (1987, Richard E Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths) – Classic Movie Review 2579

Writer-director Bruce Robinson turns his memories of being an out-of-work actor into an art form. Robinson profitably digs into his own memories as a young actor in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet and Francois Truffaut’s The Story of Adèle H for this highly amusing 1987-made, 1969-set comedy tale of the squalid lives of two poverty-stricken resting thespians, weirdo Richard E Grant (Withnail) and hippy Paul McGann (I, aka Marwood).

Students all over the world elevated the openly autobiographical film to iconic status and it made Robinson’s name, if for a brief while, and shot newcomer Grant to a happy medium-level stardom.

Withnail and I decide to swap the seedy city horrors of their dirty Camden flat in north London, infested by piles of washing-up, drug dealers and psychotic Irishmen, for a terrible trip to stay in Withnail’s uncle Monty’s country cottage in the chilly countryside, infested by rain, mud, farm animals and other rural eccentrics. The latter include a funny yokel called Jake (Michael Elphick) and Uncle Monty himself.

Grant and McGann give the most boisterous and engaging of comedy performances and the anti-swinging, tatty Sixties atmosphere of digs, drugs and drunkenness is vibrantly captured in Robinson’s clever, often extremely funny screenplay.

But, sad to say, it’s not perfect. Its venomous exuberance and laughs eventually do run out of steam and the film is marred by the anti-gay stereotype of the caricature rapacious, elderly homosexual, played with unpleasant relish by Richard Griffiths as the slavering Uncle Monty. However, this is balanced by the deep touching bonding in the crypto-homosexual relationship of Grant and McGann’s Withnail and I characters.

Yet there are moments of sublime hysteria in this British comedy classic and long-term Eighties cult favourite. The boys’ attempt to make a meal out of a semi-plucked chicken in just hilarious.

Débuting director Robinson got his chance to direct after being Oscar-nominated for his David Puttnam-supported screenplay for The Killing Fields (1984). But nothing he’s done in his career since in any way matches the success of Withnail. He’s directed only three other films, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, Jennifer 8 and, after a two-decade gap, The Rum Diary in 2011.

Also in the cast are Ralph Brown, Daragh O’Malley, Michael Wardle, Noel Johnson, Llewellyn Rees and Irene Sutcliffe.

Robinson says: ‘I was at some crummy party somewhere, and here’s my agent talking, and he says, “So, what do you do?” and I said, “You’re my agent!”‘

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2579

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com