Review of A Cock and Bull Story (2005) by Stuart M — 13 Apr 2013

This is the film of the book that is unfilmable. The whole point of the book is that a man is trying to write his autobiography and failing because he keeps getting sidetracked with extraneous details. But I'll get back to that in a bit.

The book itself was written in the mid-18th century as a counter to the growing trend of biographical novels that featured the whole life of the character in an overly sequential and contrived way. Or at least that's what Laurence Sterne (the author) thought. The only one of these novels that I know of is Tom Jones, and I only know that through the film version. That's the one with Albert Finney, not the newer BBC miniseries one. I have to say that I like Finney as an actor, but he has a tendency to be in films that disinterest me. But he made an excellent Churchill and he was a delight in Big Fish, which is really the last good film from Tim Burton.

As for this film it gets around a lot of that by staging about half the film as a behind-the-scenes look at them failing at making the film. This sort of self-referential filmmaking is something I usually dislike. The Office was never one of my favorites. But then again it does have a lot in common with Spinal Tap, although it eschews the mockumentary approach and instead treats the audience to a fly-on-the-wall perspective of the whole thing. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon went on to do a series together based on their performances as themselves in this film. It's quite entertaining as well. They're off on a televised food tour of the Yorkshire Dales and things don't go well. They edited these episodes together into a movie as well for foreign audiences.

I think my favorite character is the historical consultant who is so obsessed with realism that he gives the name of actual soldiers from the time to the extras and asks them to shout them out in combat. He just generally seems to miss the point that the point of the film is not to be a shining example of perfect realism but to be a piece of entertainment. I found him very funny. Not that I know anyone like that. ¬_¬.

The whole film ends quite suddenly with no real sense of closure or resolution.