Loot (1972)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

As Good As It Gets

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Lunacy directed by Silvio Narizzano with so much going on it's almost impossible to take it all in. Hywel Bennett & Roy Holder rob a bank and hide the money in the casket that should contain Holder's dead mother. A lot of craziness follows. Sexy nurse Lee Remick makes a quick move on Holder's mourning father (Milo O'Shea) while wacky policeman Richard Attenborough tries to figure it all out. As O'Shea tells him, Attenborough's every move is a mystery. The film moves at break-neck speed and all of the performers are hilarious. Remick affects a perfect Irish accent and Attenborough seems to be channeling early Peter Sellers. O'Shea nearly steals the film as a ridiculously understanding dolt. From the Joe Orton play with some disposable music by Keith Mansfield.

You can't go wrong when Galton and Simpson adapt an Orton play.Very black, very funny, and gloriously captures the end of the swinging sixties with the Dennis and Hal's curious way of getting out of a parking ticket.Roy Holder and Hywel Bennett are perfectly cast as the roguesh but likable main characters, and the supporting players help to carry the film along at a pace.Ultimately a very enjoyable film, and I can only roll my eyes at the thought of it being compared to Weekend at Bernies - where Loot has black humour, Bernies only has slap stick.

I am rarely tempted to add my own thoughts on any film on IMDb, but when the review for the black farce that is LOOT is compared less than favourably to WEEKEND AT BERNIES in all seriousness then even I feel I have to hitch up the keyboard and redress the situation.These are two films that are from totally different worlds.W.A.B's is an American teen romp, the kind that keep the tit and ass count down to get as many 15 year olds in to the multiplex, whilst LOOT is the second to last play written by Joe Orton the darling of the mid sixties theatre scene in London.Now I have never particularly liked LOOT as a play or as a film, preferring Entertaining Mr Sloane, Berly Reid's performance being worth the price of admission alone, but to compare it to W.A.B.'s is like comparing Hamlet to GHOST because of the presence of a spook in them. But it is easily a far superior film, yes it is a little creaky and the farce is shoe horned in but then that was Orton's style. LOOT is an example of the sad fag end of the sixties as they misfired to a close.I half expect to see Withnail and I come lurching over the horizon like spectres.Weekend At Bernies indeed.see also "Entertaining Mr.Sloane" and the bio pic "Prick Up Your Ears".

I wonder if it would be possible to re-edit this comic gem to eliminate the dreadful backing song(s). Its a play in which the absurdity of conventional attitudes is lampooned and the stirling performances by Milo O'Shea and Attenborough carry it off in the larger style required for big screen. It may mystify those hooked on two modern types of comedy film: those which mock the people who don't conform and those which don't ever rise beyond crude vaudeville. Loot sympathises with those who defy and subvert social codes. It has more in common with the intelligent humour of Harold and Maude or The Producers than with the raucous Eddie Murphy / Chevvy Chase shout-fests. Of course, its difficult. The hard of thinking may have to replay some of the one liners to appreciate the ironies - the targets are attitudes rather than personal blemishes. This is not the world of Joan Rivers either - there is no bitchy 'humour' Orton, while deliberately offending against 'good taste' never sets his sights on anything quite so grubby. The cast are all likable but absurd. Even in Orton's more bitchy plays like 'What the Butler Saw' he doesn't aim at vindictiveness - its the institution he undermines. Loot is satire, not sarcasm. The well paced direction and the crisp, non-self-indulgent acting make this a forgotten treat which should be revived, as it has been for such diverse actors as Leonard Rossiter and Kenneth Williams on stage within living memory.