Amazon.com video review:
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
