tom-darwin Review of The Magic Christian

The Magic Christian (1969)

"Just Wanted to See if You Had Your Price...Most of Us Do..."

[9/10 · 3 July 2006]

No one slices comedy with an obsidian knife the way Terry Southern does. Guy Grand changes from the American zillionaire in the novel to an English gentleman tycoon (Sellers) & gains a soulmate when he adopts scruffy vagrant Youngman (Starr), but Southern's unique low-key, vicious zaniness remains. The pair's purpose in life is to skewer institutions in particular & society in general by bribing, with their unlimited wealth, professionals, experts & officials to humiliate themselves and/or their employers. Some of the novel's funniest scenes make it to the screen, including: free cash given away to those willing to wade into vats of hideous filth to get it; Big Fang, the "Congo Black Dog," wreaking havoc at Crufts; Guy's dining experience at Chez Edouard; a traffic officer (Milligan) paid to eat Guy's parking ticket; and, of course, the "Magic Christian," the cruise ship from Hell. Worthy additions include Laurence Harvey turning Hamlet's soliloquy into a striptease ("with a bare, bare bodkin!"), Attenborough helping to turn the Oxford & Cambridge crew race into a "punch-up," and Guy collecting "French noses" at Sotheby's art auction. Sellers is perfectly deadpan & dignified as the tycoon whose determination to find everyone's price is even more believable today, the age of "Fear Factor" & "Big Brother," than in the 1970s. Starr, at the height of his creativity before his solo career spun into jaded dissolution, is just right as Guy's sounding board (as in their ambition to rewrite great books, including the Bible, with the nouns left blank for the readers to fill in). Graham Chapman & John Cleese demonstrate their trademark Python casual nonsequiturs ("the crowd seems sickened by the sight of no blood!") as well as playing small parts: Chapman as the (nearly) incorruptible Oxford crew captain & Cleese a pompous art expert. But it's the "Magic Christian"--Guy's ultimate prank--with her all-star, wacky crew that puts the film over the top. Hyde-White is the clueless captain (or is he?), Welch the chief engineer, AKA "Priestess of the Whip," Frey the cloying shrink, Lee the bloodthirsty steward & Polanski the silent drinker. And don't miss that lounge singer! Like most Southern & Python films (and Marx Bros. films before that), "The Magic Christian" doesn't so much wrap up as end simply when it runs out of gags. It's best appreciated for the sum of its parts, but in that it never misses a beat. No collection of satirical films--or Python or Sellers movies--is complete without it.