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Helen M Jerome reviews
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
- Cert:
- Cat.no: SRD93810
- Running time: 91 minutes
- Year: 2005
- Pressing: 2006
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English Hard of Hearing
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Audio Commentary by Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon; Tony Wilson Interview with Steve Coogan; Deleted Scenes; Premiere Footage; Behind the Scenes Footage; Scene Extensions.
Director:
- Michael Winterbottom
Producer:
- Andrew Eaton
Cast:
- Tristram Shandy/Walter Shandy/Steve Coogan :Steve Coogan
Toby Shandy/Rob Brydon: Rob Brydon
Dr. Slop/Dylan Moran: Dylan Moran
Elizabeth Shandy/Keeley Hawes: Keeley Hawes
Widow Wadman/Gillian Anderson: Gillian Anderson
Jennie/The Runner: Naomie Harris
Jenny, Steve Coogan’s Girlfriend: Kelly Macdonald
Mark: Jeremy Northam
Simon: James Fleet
Joe: Ian Hart
Susannah/Shirley Henderson: Shirley Henderson
Parson: David Walliams
Ingoldsby: Mark Williams
Gary: Kieran O’Brien
Patrick Curator/Parson Yorick: Stephen Fry
Lindsey: Ashley Jensen
Famously based on Laurence Sterne’s ‘unfilmable’ 18th century novel, Tristram Shandy, this is pretty much a free-form version of the original work, structurally inventive, incredibly clever-clever and with a cast of colourful and grotesque characters to die for.
So, a bit like Michael Winterbottom’s last mainstream hit, 24 Hour Party People, then, which focused on the Madchester music scene two decades ago, rather than an English country estate three centuries earlier.
It’s claustrophobic, rambling and uses comic repetition and a stop-start, non-linear timeline as it sends up itself and its cast. So we get to see the time of Tristram’s conception and birth more than once. And we get to hear the actors as they prepare for their roles and relax after their scenes. Confused? You might well be.
Steve Coogan shows off his acting chops by playing three roles: Tristram, his father Walter, and himself, ‘womanizing actor Steve Coogan’. And the rest of the ensemble also get to play themselves, with Gillian Anderson and Rob Brydon working pretty well in this self-referential and occasionally confusing plot device.
Other Winterbottom favourites like Kieran O’Brien (of 9 Songs fame) and Shirley Henderson turn up, but it’s perhaps the lesser known movie actors, who have excelled on TV – from Extras‘ Ashley Jensen and White Teeth‘s Naomie Harris to Black Books‘ Dylan Moran – who grasp their moments in the spotlight wholeheartedly.
All the infighting on and off set, the bitching and flirting, in the contemporary scenes threaten the whole project as it appears to be getting nowhere fast. And it’s all in quotation marks.
For those who can’t get enough of the “movie about the making of the movie” feel of this DVD, then it’s definitely worth watching it with the Coogan and Brydon commentary switched on. The duo are just as rambling as the film itself and will add far more to your viewing enjoyment than all the customary extras here like deleted and extended scenes.
Indeed, your level of satisfaction will rely very heavily on your adoration of Coogan and your tolerance of Winterbottom and writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s ‘look how clever we’ve been’ adaptation.
A curate’s egg of a film, and some will surely find its tongue is too firmly in its cheek, but overall it has more good points than bad. Just.
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EXTRAS
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.