Amazon.com: Monty Python's John Cleese makes this lighthearted farce work as a tightly wound, punctilious public school headmaster whose well-organized life unravels in a series of disasters on his journey to a conference. Cleese is a master of fussy, fastidious characters in exasperating situations, bottling up his frustration under good manners and sardonic comments until he finally blows, but he's also startlingly vulnerable as he systematically loses all sense of himself. Dressed in monk's robes and stranded on a lonely country road, he looks down at his naked wrist and sighs, "I've even lost the time." Michael Fryan (the playwright of Noises Off) doesn't really have much of a story behind the situations, but he provides plenty of complications, and Cleese holds the film together with his brittle manner, single-minded drive, and hilarious headmaster's condescending haughtiness. While it will seem slight to many, Cleese fans will love it. --Sean Axmaker
It has John Cleese... of course it's funny! Ok, I love John Cleese. This movie is a great sleeper starring the master. There is less physical comedy and more subtle comedy in this film, and I like that. It will never be listed among his master works I'm sure, but a great and cute little film. If you like Cleese, this belongs in your collection.
Wrapped too tight The tight fabric of the tight little British island unravels slowly and hilariously in this English entropic comedy. John Cleese, late of Monty Python, is splendid as the overwrapped butt of the joke, and Sharon Maiden as his unwilling travelling companion is a sexy comic little treasure.
Director Christopher Morahan, who did Jewel in the Crown is playing again with the theme of the middle-class overacheiver. In Jewel, he's the salesman's son who becomes an officer and whose undoing leaves us unsurprised--of course he likes to whip little boys, what do you expect of someone who's no gentleman? In Clockwise, the social climber is the headmaster of a middle-class school who's hobnobbing with his betters and gets suit- ably punished.
The snobbish dark side of the film is bothering me more in retrospect, but this is still a genuine laugh-out-loud comedy.
--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and the forthcoming novel bang-BANG from Kunati Books. ISBN 9781601640005
The longest distance between two points It's pretty ironic that this film came out the same year as the similarly plotted "Planes, Trains and Automobiles". The concept of persons trying to get from Point A to Point B only to find themselves at Points C through Q first has been fodder for movie comedies for years. (Think of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" or any of the Hope/Crosby "Road to..." movies.)
Only one thing makes this film different from the others. (You guessed it!) John Cleese. Rather than exploding at every mishap along the way, Cleese's performance is an exercise in proper British restraint in the face of adversity. The master of the slow boil, Edgar Kennedy, would have appreciated Cleese's performance here. You just wait. You feel Cleese's blood pressure rise. You see the veins swelling and coiling. It's truly something amazing to watch. The supporting cast is very effective, and, as another reviewer pointed out, is a veritable roll call of British character actors. And what characters!
But even the best of these films suffer from the fact that they are one-joke movies. They tend to drag on just a little bit, and "Clockwise" is no different. Still, it's worth viewing.
Finally, the brief interview with John Cleese is a nice little addition to this DVD.
What a hoot! This is Cleese doing what Cleese does best. Right, I mean insanity by inches.
He starts as a utterly rigid headmaster, the kind so precise that he stops in mid-sentence to make sure that the clock ticks when it should. Right. He sets out, at the precise moment, to accept a major award for himself and his school. Right?
Right.
Then just a little thing happens. A very little thing. He asks the way to the train - which is it? Left?
Right.
And right he goes. From that point forward, it's a comedy of errors. At each new error, Cleese's character adds a notch to the pressure. Step by step, the frenzy increases, new characters add their bits to the pressure ("sherry glasses", for example), until you expect everyone to burst a vein. Somewhere along the line, Cleese ends up in just his boxers, as required. The ending is very British, with all of the various police jurisdictions politely working out which characters go to which gaols.
I swear, I've had days like that.
There are a few nits to pick here. That high-school girl had more of a twenty-something look about her, for example. But c'mon, the story works, the characters work, the mishaps work, and it all comes together in the perfect "thank gawd it's not me" experience.
If you set your expectations low enough, this is sure to exceed them. It's a specimen of the 'goofy britcom' species, and a stunning one at that. Enjoy it for what it is.
//wiredweird
Not as funny as A Fish Called Wanda I've watched a few of the movies that Cleese has been in (Monty Python series; A Fish Called Wanda, Fierce Creatures etc...) and have found them all to be quite funny, so I had high hopes when I got this movie.
Basically, Cleese is an uptight headmaster of a British School whose punctiliousness has led to his being chosen as the chairman of the National Headmasters Association (or some such name). Unfortunately on the day when he is to give his speech, a series of incidents occur that could lead to his being late for the meeting. That is where the fun begins, and you go on a roller-coaster ride, as one incident after another occurs that adds to the chaos.
Cleese as usual is hilarious, but I couldn't help feeling that the plot was a little bit too simplistic; linear almost, and were it not for his acting, the movie would have flopped. Overall, it wasn't a bad movie, it had its funny parts, but I don't think it was anything near his best. If you want to watch Cleese at his best, I would suggest _A fish called Wanda_ where he teams up with Michael Pallin and Kevin Kline.
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