Withnail and I Movie Review

There's nostalgic drek about the 1960s and then there's the bracing dark comedy Withnail and I. Who better to separate fantasy from reality about that era than George Harrison and Richard Starkey (AKA Ringo Starr)? As a spur to struggling creative geniuses, The Beatles’ Apple was worm-ridden from Day One, but Handmade Films, Harrison's independent film company, did ensure that intriguing small films like this one saw the light of day. (The roster of Handmade Films also includes Life of Brian, Time Bandits, Privates on Parade, Water, Track 29, Powwow Highway, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, Cold Dog Soup, Nuns on the Run, and The Raggedy Rawney, demonstrating that there WAS an audience for well-made indies. In the process, Handmade Films enjoyed great success for well over a decade.) The out-of-work title characters, Richard E. Grant and Mark McGann, escape their drug-and-cockroach-ridden London apartment to spend the weekend from hell in the rainy countryside, where Withnail's chubby gay uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) soliloquizes about vegetables and makes a pass at the totally freaked-out “I.” Writer/director Bruce Robinson does a brilliant job translating his vividly detailed novel to the screen, fully aware of the significance of the last few weeks of 1969, yet skillfully avoiding the trap of syrup-laden myopia 6,570 mornings after the fact.

1987 (R) 108m/C GB Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths, Ralph Brown, Michael Elphick; D: Bruce Robinson; W: Bruce Robinson; C: Peter Hannan; M: David Dundas. VHS, LV