Part of Staff Picks and programmed by Jo, who says: “It’s Summer! I’ve picked the cult-classic British comedy WITHNAIL AND I. It’s a bleak boozy misadventure and rain-soaked holiday vacation. The tea is cold, the humour’s dry, and the countryside is terrifying.”
Tue, Aug 19 at 8:00pm: Staff Pick introduction from Jo McCaughey | BUY TICKETS
London. The 1960s. Two unemployed actors — acerbic, elegantly wasted Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and the anxiety-ridden “I” (Paul McGann) — drown their frustrations in booze, pills and lighter fluid. When Withnail’s Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths) offers his cottage, they escape the squalor of their flat for a week in the country. They soon realize they’ve gone on holiday by mistake when their wits — and friendship — are sorely tested by violent downpours, less than hospitable locals and empty cupboards. An intelligent, superbly acted and hilarious film, Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical cult favorite is presented here in its complete and uncut version.
“Writer-director Bruce Robinson's sui generis masterpiece from 1987…was something to which nothing before or afterwards is really comparable. It had a miraculously literate script whose every line deservedly became a quotable classic and the film boasts a once-in-a-lifetime combination of perfect performances.” —Peter Bradshaw, Guardian (UK) “It achieves a kind of transcendence in its gloom. It is uncompromisingly, sincerely, itself. It is not a lesson or a lecture, it is funny but in a consistent way that it earns, and it is unforgettably acted. Bruce Robinson saw such times, survived them and remembers them not with bitterness but fidelity. In Withnail, he creates one of the iconic figures in modern films.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times “Endlessly quotable, touching, and funny, WITHNAIL & I is a British cult classic about friendship, acting, and alcohol. Lots of alcohol. Prepare to enter the arena of the unwell…. The film raises smirks to belly laughs every other minute, but the chuckles give way to surprising pathos in the Shakespeare-quoting closing scene.” —Nev Pearce, BBC “Writer-director Bruce Robinson's sui generis masterpiece from 1987…was something to which nothing before or afterwards is really comparable. It had a miraculously literate script whose every line deservedly became a quotable classic and the film boasts a once-in-a-lifetime combination of perfect performances.” —Peter Bradshaw, Guardian (UK)
