A Private Function (1985)

Great Film overall

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Any movie with pigs in it gets my blessings. Perhaps one of the reasons why this comedy didn't do as well at the Box Office as its producers had hoped can be found in its awful title. Does "A Private Function" sound like the title of a comedy to anyone? It reminds more of a Lean or Minghella movie than a story about an illegal post-war pig. "The Pig With Nine Lives" would have been the other extreme – too silly-sounding – but given the choice between a dull and dry title only an accountant can love and a title that at least indicates a comedy - I'd go for the latter. Perhaps a compromise? "A Private Pig". So how much fun does APF aka TPWNL aka APP offer? The first half-hour serves as a rather dry intro, devoid of laughs, and even a little nauseating to be frank. Toe-nail clippings sitting on pieces of chocolate on the floor is neither my idea of comedy nor visual joy. I never really fantasized about watching a chiropodist do his filthy work either, whether in a chiropodical BBC documentary or a comedy. Foot-fetishists should be pleased, though. APF is a little too glum for a comedy. Typical dry British humour, but hardly at its best. I am not suggesting the movie should have been written and played as a broad farce instead, but a compromise between overkill/farce and glum dryness would certainly have worked better. The only real laughs come about during the bits with the abducted pig rummaging around Palin's house (and the farmer throwing eggs into the fire by mistake); the rest is preachy rather than properly comedic. The drubbing of the upper class was a priority, rather than laugh-out-loud situational comedy, hence why Elliott's doctor is so over-the-top nasty and unlikable as opposed to ridiculous and funny – which is how proper comedic bad guys are written. Elliott's (ironically very truthful) quip against Socialism ("what's yours is mine") reveals the film-makers' left-wing intent - to anybody who hadn't already suspected it by that point. Still, I wouldn't classify APF as overt Marxist propaganda, especially considering how extreme British left-wing propaganda can get. The political implications are pretty much solely class-related i.e. not too obvious.I had hoped APF would redeem its relative glumness by having the accountant and Palin hide the pig into safety; an ending that would have been both satisfying and in line with comedy's unwritten rule about the main animal character escaping the butcher's knife. Or the writers could have had Maggie Smith blackmail the upper-class snobs into giving Palin the lease for his shop – just minutes before the "Gestapo" inspector barges into the house and confiscates the pig (hence saving it, at least for a while).Another problem APF has is its extreme Britishness. Sure, any Mongolian or Moldavian viewer unfamiliar with British culture can understand the more simple gags such as a pig farting and crapping around, but a lot of the dialog and the early goings-on do presume that you're English. Certainly having lived in the 40s London is advantageous, too. I don't see what chance in Hell APF could have had on the U.S. and Continental markets.Ultimately, APF is a well-cast, visually ambitious British product with a clever plot but a disappointing conclusion and far too few truly funny moments. It succeeds as an interesting and fairly amusing post-war/black-market satire, but even in that arena it isn't ideal. If the ugly woman who plays Palin's wife seems familiar (to the younger viewers) and yet you don't know her name, then you've probably seen the resemblance to that awful son of hers, Toby Stephens. You might remember him overacting his butt off while playing that ridiculous Bond villain in "Die Another Day". Nepotism is a disease; like a zombie virus it spreads exponentially and once it takes hold cannot be eradicated without the use of atomic bombs.

Sometimes in 1947 Britain it was hard to grasp that we had "won the war" as we used to say in those days with scant regard for the efforts of our Russian and American allies.Everything was "On the ration",the shops were half - empty,British Industry was struggling with the burden of "Export or Die" and returning servicemen were finding that their jobs had been taken by non - combatants in their absence.Germany,on the other hand,was being rebuilt by the Yanks at astronomical expense whilst we were the recipients of the occasional "food parcel"Were we bitter?I should say so.Hence any chance to hit back at "them"(the government,authority in general,those seen as untouched by years of hardship) was seized with alacrity. Thus the Black Market thrived.If a butcher(Mr P Postlethwaite,say)had kept back one of his pigs from the men from the Ministry of Agriculture to keep for his own use it would be seen as a perfectly acceptable gesture particularly if we were to be beneficiaries from the crime through his shop. In "A Private Function" that master of the extraordinary ordinary Mr Alan Bennett has captured that era of spivs with cardboard suitcases alighting from black Morris Eights,dodgy nylons,blue - painted horse meat and large crispy fivers as if preserved in amber. He well knows the social aspirations of lower middle class Brits and the lengths they would(would? - still will..)go to in order to "improve" their perceived standing in the community.Miss M.Smith's ambitions in this area know no bounds.Her unfortunate husband(Mr M.Palin - mercifully a Python - Free performance for once) is completely in her thrall. He steals Mr Postlethwaite's pig and keeps it for use at the eponymous Private Function to celebrate the wedding of Princess Elizabeth,hoping to ensure favourable reaction to his application to open a shop and also to further his wife's social hopes. Almost parochially British in content,"Private Function" may be a curate's egg for those to whom our manners and mores are a bit of a mystery,but those looking for a successor to the old Alec Guinness - Stanley Holloway school of comedies need look no further.

I am clearly missing this great comedy that all the other reviewers have seen. I was quite looking forward to this movie and normally enjoy the quirky British comedies but this is a huge disappointment. The basic idea of a movie about the food rationing times in the period after World War 2 is good but it is steeply downhill from thereon. The movie has no real story going for it and it is simply not funny at all. The performances all round are pretty average. The only bright side I can think of about this movie is the mother in law. She is a brilliant character and very well played. But that doesn't make up for one of the most boring and pointless movies I have seen for a long time. How could this be nominated for a BAFTA for best movie??

Life after WWII was bleak in England. Rationing was hitting hard, but spirits were lifted by the forthcoming royal marriage of Elizabeth and Philip. This slice of village life takes a poke at stiff England and the trials and tribulations of getting a slap up feast on the table for the local VIPs to celebrate the marriage. Michael Palin is the wimp, and marvellous Maggie Smith is the "trousers" in the relationship. Lots of lovely one-liners to treasure.