Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005)

With a movie like this, you either go along for the ride, or you don't. I did. When Steve Coogan teams up with Michael Winterbottom and Rob Brydon, I'm bound to. And while the humor with this group usually has a lot of ups & downs, I didn't ever feel bored during Tristram Shandy. Coogan plays himself playing himself quite well, and his self-deprecation is pitch-perfect.

All the meta levels of the film work quite well. It was particularly fun watching the adult Tristram Shandy introduce, and then critique, the actor playing his childhood self. I also appreciated the various transitions where people slip in and out of character, or where the crew step in and out. That was all handled really well, and made it a lot of fun. In the last half, though, as the film gets more and more tied to the off-screen stuff, it loses some of its vigor.

It was a fun film, but felt a bit slight. When it was all over, I had a lesser version of the same feeling I usually get from PoMo stuff, which is basically the resounding question "Why?" It's easier to find the purpose and meaning behind a Judd Apatow movie, I think, than behind so many of the ironically detached exercises that PostModernists love to love. Still, as I said, that reaction was muted with this movie. Mostly because I did find it so funny, and I think that is mostly down to Coogan's performance.