| Loved it |
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| written by Texan99 |
September 4, 2010 - 12:12 PM PDT |
| Robert Altman has great fun cramming a dozen movies into one and playing them all at one time in scene after scene. An American filmmaker is about to do a Charlie Chan vehicle with an Agatha Christie plot, so he arranges to spend some time at an English house-party by way of research. Around him unfolds not only an absurdly overstuffed whodunnit but a sad novel of manners along the lines of "The Shooting Party," along with some "Brideshead Revisited" dissection of class, a lot of "Upstairs, Downstairs," some Oscar Wilde, a little "Remains of the Day," and bits of every other Masterpiece Theatre presentation you've ever seen. The bumbling Inspector-Clouseau character makes a hash of investigating the several ways in which the victim was done in, as his subordinates try and fail to engage his interest in a variety of red-flag clues, while he tries and fails to get any of the suspects to notice him at all. It must have been awfully fun to act in an Altman movie, to judge by the ease with which he could get 15 or 20 first-rate actors to sign up for an ensemble piece like this. None of them is wasted. This movie is best watched a second or third time. |
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