I wanted to like this. I usually enjoy off-beat humour, and respect the spirit in which this film was made, and although the film's narrative is disjointed, it isn't hard to follow, so that is not my issue with it.
The problem comes from the individual scenes in themselves. The dialogue is inventive, and I actually like the almost lyrical narration, but non-sequiturs are only funny if they are used in the right context, that is to say that a logical chain of language sets up our expectation, but the non-sequitur subverts it, as seen in The Young Ones and Look Around You.
What you have here is non-sequitur after non-sequitur, meaning nothing surprises you because you soon come to expect wackiness for the sake of it, and so the film's attempt to be mad is actually wholly predictable and boring. There are a few moments of inspired comedy - the hang-glider scene in particular - but again, unlike most people, it isn't the haphazard narrative that put me off, and while the dialogue is quite original, it's just a string of unusual lines without a conversation to belong to, 'Have you killed?' and 'he called me his/a perfect brick' are just nonsense for the sake of it. Nothing makes those funny in of themselves.
As I'd heard a little about its cult status, I expected something with the quality of Withnail and I or Python or Peter Cook's work. This is unique, but uniqueness is not enough.
The problem comes from the individual scenes in themselves. The dialogue is inventive, and I actually like the almost lyrical narration, but non-sequiturs are only funny if they are used in the right context, that is to say that a logical chain of language sets up our expectation, but the non-sequitur subverts it, as seen in The Young Ones and Look Around You.
What you have here is non-sequitur after non-sequitur, meaning nothing surprises you because you soon come to expect wackiness for the sake of it, and so the film's attempt to be mad is actually wholly predictable and boring. There are a few moments of inspired comedy - the hang-glider scene in particular - but again, unlike most people, it isn't the haphazard narrative that put me off, and while the dialogue is quite original, it's just a string of unusual lines without a conversation to belong to, 'Have you killed?' and 'he called me his/a perfect brick' are just nonsense for the sake of it. Nothing makes those funny in of themselves.
As I'd heard a little about its cult status, I expected something with the quality of Withnail and I or Python or Peter Cook's work. This is unique, but uniqueness is not enough.