A send-up (as it used to be called) of the Merchant-Ivory strain of High-Tea Cinema: upper-crust Brits and trampled rustics, the repressed homosexual, the marriageable maiden, the spinsterly chaperone, the globe-trotters and the colonials, the loud-mouthed Americans -- all that. The settings range from the home country (a pub called Scum of the Earth) to balmy Italy (a pub called Scumma de Terra) to beastly India ("Christ, this food is disgusting. It's no wonder they're so thin"). It sounds, at any rate, like a ripe idea. The actual gags are not as broad and disfiguring as those in Airplane! and its spawn (Samuel West, who has had personal experience with Merchant-Ivory, makes an excellent twit), but nor are they very funny. Frank Finlay as the impassively mutinous butler comes closest to bridging the gap. With Georgina Cates, Prunella Scales, Sean Pertwee, and Peter Ustinov; directed by Gary Sinyor. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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