More bull, less cock in dandy Shandy
Review: Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

By Steve Warren
Staff Reviewer

"Does this make me look fat?"

With Moby Dick or Oliver Twist or The Scarlet Letter you can probably fake your way through a cocktail party conversation (if anyone still discusses classic novels at cocktail parties) because you've seen one of the movie versions.

Alas, in the case of Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman there has been no film to fall back on. (I don't know anyone who's read the book either so it's never been a problem.)

Well, now there's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, which will teach you as much about the book as a Dubya speech will tell you about the truth. That may not be a bad thing, because from what I hear the film resembles the novel in the way it constantly digresses from the story it's supposed to be about.

As Sterne's novel was about the writing of a biography, not the biography itself, Michael Winterbottom's film is about the making of a movie, not the movie itself. Oh, there's an attempt for about 20 minutes to show what it would look like, but even this is riddled with detours.

Before I forget to mention it, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is hilarious. It's especially recommended for Britcom fans as it has elements of Extras and Steve Coogan's "Alan Partridge" series (Knowing Me, Knowing You, etc.), but it's probably the funniest "making of a movie" movie since Living in Oblivion; or at least Incident at Loch Ness.

Coogan plays a version of himself as an insecure diva. He's introduced in the makeup room with co-star Rob Brydon, discussing the size of their parts—their parts in the film, although to Coogan there's obviously a correlation with genitalia. Later he'll he concerned about the height of his shoes—only for artistic reasons, of course, so his character can visually dominate Brydon's when he's supposed to.

The film sequence is narrated by Tristram Shandy (Coogan), who tells in a roundabout way how he was born. His father, Walter Shandy is also played by Coogan—his only part, actually, since the grown Tristram is never seen.

As the scene ends we pull back to see the chaos on the set, and that's most of what we see for the next hour. Coogan is visited by his girlfriend, Jenny (Kelly Macdonald), with their newborn son, which interrupts his flirtation with Jennie (Naomie Harris), a member of the crew. He's blackmailed by a tabloid reporter into giving an interview and given scripts to read by his agent.

This film's script is still in flux. A low-budget battle scene will have to be reshot, or they can leave it out and add a romantic subplot involving the Widow Wadman. Gillian Anderson just happens to be available on a moment's notice for the latter role, but her involvement with Tristram's Uncle Toby will make Brydon's role bigger than Coogan's.

Mark Williams plays Ingoldsby, an expert on the 18th century who strives to maintain historical accuracy. He comments that the battle scenes in Cold Mountain were "shite."

Winterbottom, whose film on Guantanamo caused a sensation at the Berlin Film Festival, is one of the most versatile filmmakers around, but period pieces (Jude, The Claim) have heretofore proved his undoing (with the exception of 24 Hour Party People, set in the recent past). This time he gets it right by focusing on why it's so damn hard to make a period film instead of the film itself. So much work goes into the making of a movie, and yet so much of what goes on on a set has little or nothing to do with the movie being made.

Don't leave before the credits or you'll miss Coogan and Brydon arguing about who does the better Al Pacino impression, and what's an adaptation of an 18th-century literary classic without dueling Pacinos?

Steve Warren is a local actor and film reviewer. His reviews can also be seen weekly in the Sunday Paper.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
Rating: (3 out of 4)

Directed by: Michael Winterbottom
Written by: Martin Hardy (based on the novel by Laurence Sterne)
Starring: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Kelly Macdonald, Naomie Harris, Mark Williams, Gillian Anderson

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