They just don't make them like they used to. At least, if you haven't seen 'The Man Who Knew Too Little', you'd probably think that. Many bemoan the decline of that classic genre of film - the old-fashioned British farce. It seems they lost favour for being just that bit too calamitous, too bawdy and too self-indulgently ridiculous. This film is an attempt to recreate the laid-back, cheerful, innocent silliness of those old comedy classics - but how does it avoid those aspects of past farces that made them less palatable to modern viewers and critics? If this film has any failings at all, then it is maybe that it does not avoid the temptation to be just that crucial margin too unbelievable for the viewer. Admittedly, the humour can only work if Murray's character is as truly stupid as he appears to be in failing to grasp the reality of the situation by the end, and if no-one, not even his brother or the call-girl, informs him of it, but although it works wonderfully up to a point, in a way I was hoping he would twig eventually. But that's a minor point. What is more ridiculous still is, of course, the zany manner of his consistent escapes from danger. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not a killjoy and I completely recognise how ludicrous a film of this sort has to be in order to work. Indeed, the utter cluelessness of the lead was a delight to watch, and the comedy was slick, even if the budget was lower than the movie deserved and a few performances (even Richard Wilson, surprisingly) were somewhat wooden. But this didn't detract from a wonderful piece of sit-back-and-enjoy laugh-fest. Whatever its flaws, above all else it is impossible not to get a real feel-good buzz from this film, and a lot of laughs besides. The script manages to stay consistent, and does not - as would be very easy - slip up at all when holding together a quite complicated set of circumstances designed to delude Bill Murray's unlikely superhero. The scenes towards the end clearly owe something to 'Naked Gun', but that is never a bad thing - I thoroughly enjoyed watching this, and the one question you probably want to ask now is: so why criticise at all? Well, while this is a beautiful example of the lost art of farce-making, it also represents a lost opportunity. To have been better still, this movie should ideally have combined the fluid innocence of the chaotic comedy with something newer - maybe make the whole 'cold war' plot idea advance a bit. While I thought the whole subplot that Murray has no clue about was ample for the purposes of the movie, and was suitably unserious, the audiences of today want something more substantial, on the whole, and maybe 'The Man Who Knew Too Little' could have been a box office smash if it had had something innovative like this. As it is, nothing new, not a whole lot you haven't seen before, but this doesn't matter - this film is the best of what the old days comedy had to offer, and it made me laugh lots. Really worth seeing - if only more would follow.
Review of The Man Who Knew Too Little
