Review of The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997) by Jarrett G — 30 Dec 2014

I couldn't really understand whether Bill Murray's character was supposed to be charmingly dumb or actually mentally deficient in this dreadful, unfunny attempt at a comedy. The plot harks back to classic slapstick comedies where the main protagonist gets mistaken for someone else and doesn't realise that they are in a potentially dangerous situation.

Here, Bill Murray thinks he's taking part in a immersive theatrical experience where instead, he's actually caught up in a plot involving some kind of hitman and political shenanigans. These sorts of coincidence-lead comedies can be really funny and clever but you have to buy into it and I'm afraid this just fails totally.

I can't work out what Murray is trying to achieve with his dreadful, deadpan performance. It's like he's at a particularly painful script read through and hasn't had a chance to read his lines in advance.

There's a host of British actors that turn up to give cringe-worthy turns in supporting roles, doing nothing for their reputations. This feels almost like one of those terrible big-screen outings of 1970s British sitcoms where the script writers put in half a days work to churn out 90 minutes worth of dialogue without bothering to think whether it was actually worthwhile doing.

In fact, now I think about it, Holiday On The Buses is quite a bit funnier than this.