As Jerry Seinfeld once said, "Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason," and such is the case with this film. While I enjoy some odd dry British humor as much as the next yank (I can recall sitting in a room full of people watching Rumpole of the Bailey and being the only one who laughed), the Magic Christian isn't all that terribly funny. It's just terrible.
Sellers and cohorts take stabs at big industry, big bosses, and the cluelessness with which they live their lives (men similarly targeted by the Python group), but it's all just pointless and aimless ranting, with no connection (and not much humor). At times it plays like an especially bad series of SNL skits that someone tried to stitch together into an hour and a half, thinking that if one three minute bit is great, thirty of them will bring the house down. Well, it rarely works on Saturday nights, and it sure didn't work here.
What is special about the Magic Christian is that it is a rare breed, namely, one of those wacky films done in the late 60s/early 70s where there were apparently no boundaries and nothing had to make sense at all, sort of an offshoot of the avant garde youth movement back then. As we all know, these types of films launched during that period (Chastity, anyone?), are mostly astonishingly bad, yet I have to admit to an odd pleasure watching the mess unfold on screen, wondering what in the hell anyone was thinking, or were they all so high it didn't matter? Unless you're a Beatles maniac (a friend I talked to about this film had seen it solely because he had spent some time tracking down every movie that every Beatle had been featured in -- a feat he warned me against repeating), there's no reason to see this film. Certainly not for Sellers, who is even more incoherent than usual. Ringo is okay, but when is Ringo not okay (at least on screen?). As for my personal interest, Ms. Welch, well, she's in it all of twenty seconds, so on that score it wasn't worth it either. Frankly, aside from a curiosity piece, there's really nothing to recommend about this film at all, I have to say.
Sellers and cohorts take stabs at big industry, big bosses, and the cluelessness with which they live their lives (men similarly targeted by the Python group), but it's all just pointless and aimless ranting, with no connection (and not much humor). At times it plays like an especially bad series of SNL skits that someone tried to stitch together into an hour and a half, thinking that if one three minute bit is great, thirty of them will bring the house down. Well, it rarely works on Saturday nights, and it sure didn't work here.
What is special about the Magic Christian is that it is a rare breed, namely, one of those wacky films done in the late 60s/early 70s where there were apparently no boundaries and nothing had to make sense at all, sort of an offshoot of the avant garde youth movement back then. As we all know, these types of films launched during that period (Chastity, anyone?), are mostly astonishingly bad, yet I have to admit to an odd pleasure watching the mess unfold on screen, wondering what in the hell anyone was thinking, or were they all so high it didn't matter? Unless you're a Beatles maniac (a friend I talked to about this film had seen it solely because he had spent some time tracking down every movie that every Beatle had been featured in -- a feat he warned me against repeating), there's no reason to see this film. Certainly not for Sellers, who is even more incoherent than usual. Ringo is okay, but when is Ringo not okay (at least on screen?). As for my personal interest, Ms. Welch, well, she's in it all of twenty seconds, so on that score it wasn't worth it either. Frankly, aside from a curiosity piece, there's really nothing to recommend about this film at all, I have to say.