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Your Learning Zone - Withnail & I
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List Price: $14.99
Our Price: $49.99
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Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Starring: Una Brandon-Jones, Ralph Brown, Michael Elphick, Richard E. Grant, Richard Griffiths
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786304271506
Format: Color
ISBN: 6304271506
Label: Starz / Anchor Bay
Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Starz / Anchor Bay
Release Date: 1997-09-10
Running Time: 107
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Theatrical Release Date: 1987-06-19
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Hilarious and heartbreaking
Comment: Withnail and I is a film that got in under my radar; I simply hadn't heard of it until recently. After I did IMDB and Google searches on it, I knew it was "my kind" of movie, and I bought the DVD without having ever seen it. It is, if possible, even a better film than I was expecting.
The direction and performances are first-rate, and the script is wonderful. Based on only two viewings (there will be many more), Withnail and I is in my personal top twenty movies.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hilarious...
Comment: British film set in London in the 1960's. Withnail (played by Richard E. Grant) and Marwood (Paul McGann) are aspiring actors. Both are unemployed and penniless and seemingly always in search of drink. The live in a dirty bachelor pad with the sink filled with dirty dishes, a bathtub filled with who-knows-what and the pitter-patter of rodents ever present. They seeks ways to stay warm as their money has run out. Withnail, the leader of the two, rails over life's injustices. Marwood is the more balanced of the two and tags along - worried and anxious. Withnail's rich, rotund and eccentric Uncle Monty lends them the use of his cottage in the country and they head out for a road trip in a blinding rain storm. They arrive at the cottage - and it is cold, without food or fire wood. Uncle Monty arrives unexpectedly and begins to woo Marwood. (Withnail told Uncle Monty that Marwood is a homosexual in his efforts to get use of the cottage).
If you liked "Midnight Run" or "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", you likely enjoy this hilarious film which is replete with memorable one-liners.
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the all time cult greats
Comment: In the UK, Withnail and I is a seminal cult classic. A pean to 60s romanticism, alcoholism, individuality and talent sordidly and tragically pissed up the wall. Withnail and Marwood are two 'resting' actors living in magnificent squalor in Camden Town in the late 1960s. Frustrated and depressed with their existence, a pile of fetid washing up in the sink and Withnail with a recklessly unstable antifreeze drinking habit (the film has spawned its own drinking game), they manage to escape to a Lake District cottage for a weekend courtesy of Withnail's obese pederast uncle Monty, who legend has it is based on a real life tutor at Oxford University (still teaching - many people know who he is!)
The weekend turns sour as the dysfunctional duo face pouring rain, hostile locals and an awareness that their practical survival skills are about as effective as, well, as you imagine they would be from dissolute actors. They struggle to find food and wood, and hunker down for a grim weekend when Monty himself appears. They settle down to a classic roast lunch and liberal amounts of claret, but come the evening Monty reveals his intentions towards Marwood. The film gets funnier and funnier as social relations breakdown, and the final scene with Richard E. Grant unleashing a Hamlet soliloquy in the pouring rain is a poignant testament to the deep and noble frustration of the thwarted creative personality.
The quotable lines from this movie are abundant. No one sees this film once, it gets better and better with every subsequent viewing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The finest film available to humanity
Comment: I can't help thinking that a lot of people get this film wrong. Yes, it is very very funnny and yes, it is the most quotable film I know (I know practically the whole script by heart - does that make me a nerd?), but surely it is much more than that? If Withnail was 'just' a funny quotable film, I don't think it would A) have achieved such cult status and B) would have touched so many people (well me at least) in such a profound way. Withnail is funny but it is also a very moving film about friendship. It's about growing up. It's about coming of age. It'S about those people who never 'quite' make it. The scene in which Marwood and Withnail say goodbye, you know the 'chin chin' scene, is one of the most moving moments of film I have ever seen.I always get an overwhelming feeling of sympathy for Withnail at that moment and his final solioquy from Hamlet is simply breath-taking. The only film I can think of that does roughly the same thing is 'One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest'. Jack Nicolson is brilliant. Richard. E. Grant is brilliant. ONe flew is very very funny and very quotable ('At least I tried Goddamn it, at least I did that.'). Withnail is even more quotable ('We want the finest wines available to humanity.....'). RP McMurphy is the classic loser-joker, like Withnail. And, like in Withnail, One flew twists us around at the end and chokes the laughter in our throats with the final scene. It is the mark of a genius to do that. The 'CHief' runs off into the distance. Withnail walks off into the distance. If you love One Flew like me, you'll love Withnail and I.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Flowers are basically tarts, prostitutes for the bees
Comment: There is one film that might be funnier than Withnail and I, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and that's it. The dialogue is brilliant. Every line is quotable, over and over.
The secret is that you must watch Withnail and I many times. Watch it over and over. Then you will realize its genius. It cannot be gotten in one viewing.
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Editorial Reviews:
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A corrosively funny, semiautobiographical account by writer-director Bruce Robinson (How to Get Ahead in Advertising) about a couple of destitute roommates, young actors living in drunken squalor in 1969, the twilight days of swingin' London. Withnail (the astounding Richard E. Grant in a definitive performance) is a kind of depraved, modern-day Oscar Wilde, but without the money or the manners. The "I" of the title is the younger and more impressionable Marwood (Paul McGann), who stands somewhat in awe of his scandalous, demented, hysterical pal. While on a miserable holiday in the bitterly cold and damp countryside, they stay with wealthy, corpulent "Uncle Monty" (Richard Griffiths), who takes quite a liking to young Marwood, much to his consternation. Though not well known in the United States, Withnail & I has a major cult following in England. It's uproariously funny in a peculiarly British way, and the acting is absolutely scintillating. (Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert said Griffiths's was the best performance by an actor in a British film since Denholm Elliott in A Room with a View.) This one's a real treat for the caustic at heart. --Jim Emerson
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