Review of The Magic Christian (1969) by Brooke W — 11 Jan 2010

What a crazy movie! It doesn't really have a plot so much as a series of odd skits. Generally these are centered on the idea that everyone can be made willing to do absolutely anything, no matter how bizarre or grotesque, if paid off with enough money, but much of the movie is completely random: offbeat interplay between Peter Sellers and Ringo, many aimless bits, a lot of guest appearances (oh man, Laurence Harvey's striptease Hamlet, and that green-colored chanteuse scene with Roman Polanski and... wait for it... Yul Brynner! Wow!). The mad extravaganza sequence, in which all hell breaks loose on a ship (including a familiar vampire who comes pretty much out of nowhere), makes the shocking final setup (which is supposed to be the clincher for the people-will-do-anything-for-money theme) almost anticlimactic, and some of the aimless material (especially early on) doesn't really go anywhere, but there's enough really effective stuff in here to make it worthwhile. The director doesn't necessarily have the visual mastery of someone like Richard Lester, who's associated with films in this vein, but he makes sure to fill the screen with strange material (random nuns passing by and such). Sellers, really, seems to be the driving force behind this (and does a lot of the voice-overs for unimportant characters). This movie is actually pretty damn subversive; some scenes are so striking as to be nearly worthy of How I Won the War, O Lucky Man!, or maybe even Sweet Movie. (And its hallway tracking shots are similar to The Shining.) I guess John Lennon and Yoko were keen on this project too. A pretty wicked time, it must have been.

The original tagline reads: 'The Magic Christian is: antiestablishmentarian, antibellum, antitrust, antiseptic, antibiotic, antisocial, & antipasto.' Yeah, that about sums it up.