Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Jakoba True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

andrew-1334 8/10 but 0/10 for whoever wrote the bios on the DVD. In Alan Bennett's bio regarding "Talking Heads", the writer continually refers to "Thora Bird". If you've never heard of her, it's because he means Thora Hird. The DVD itself is a priceless time-capsule for fans of any satirical comedy that came after. Some of it is dated of course, but here are a few definite gems. Cook is by far the star of the show (as was recognized at the time). Moore is not given enough to do other than his masterful piano playing, Bennett shows the roots of his future droll comedy and Miller is a bit too over the top and the weakest performer of the four. The video quality suffers occasionally as does the sound track but not to any great extent. Watch out particularly for the old lady in the audience who never applauds. Perhaps the inspiration for the Pythons' old "pepperpots".

tavm So after decades of reading about the comedy revue that jump-started the careers of the comic duo Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, I finally watched on DVD that revue that also featured Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller: Beyond the Fringe. Not everything that was depicted in this now-legendary event was funny, in fact, many of the references to certain historical or cultural happenings were dated to me but there were still a few skits that were quite hilarious to me like the beginning one about America, "The Great Train Robbery" with Cook making it clear that it's not a reference to a train being stolen, another Cook sketch in which he's a coal miner who wanted to be a judge and who writes about nude women on the side, and then there's "One Leg Too Few" in which Cook interviews Moore jumping on one foot as he auditions for the role of Tarzan! That one I recognized immediately since I first watched this sketch on a rerun of "Saturday Night Live" that they hosted when I was a teen. Still quite hilarious to me. Also loved seeing Moore at the piano especially as he makes faces to us or when he performs a pretentious version of "The Colonel Bogey March". Bennett can be a bit droll here especially when he plays a vicar delivering a sermon about the part of a sardine can you can't reach into and Miller can occasionally amuse when he mugs furiously. So on that note, I'd recommend Beyond the Fringe for anyone who's into satire especially of the British kind.

John Esche I snapped up this video the moment it was released as one of the rare Original London (and Broadway) cast performances recorded complete as it was done on stage (recorded at its final London performance). It was also the source of two hilarious LPs from Capitol Records that saw many of us through our college years.The classic revue - which later led to such heady intellectual fare as TV's THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS - is just as good as remembered and makes one long for the days when comedy wasn't afraid to make you think....THE FRINGE still had its share of buffoonery with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore embarking on their long careers as clown princes, but the BRIGHTEST of the bunch, Alan Bennett, is an even greater reason to spend an evening BEYOND THE FRINGE (the title an oblique reference to the famed annual Edinburgh Cultural Festival and its burgeoning "Fringe" Festival of entries which could not be booked into the main festival venues).Bennett would soon leave the performing field (mostly) to concentrate on an even longer and more fulfilling writing career. As I write this, I'm still in the heady glow of one of the early Broadway performances of what may be Bennett's masterpiece, THE HISTORY BOYS, which transferred from London with most of its cast in tact after being filmed for later release. If half as good as it is on stage, THE HISTORY BOYS will be another movie/video to be cherished and the ultimate "Bennett Double Feature" as it expands the intellectual gamesmanship Bennett first started to develop in BEYOND THE FRINGE to full mature power.A Brit recently told a newsman en-route to interview Bennett that "in England he's a God!" High praise indeed for a country which has also given us such relatively recent cultural deities as Tom Stoppard (ROSENCRANCZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD and Shakespeare IN LOVE) and Michael Frayn (NOISES OFF and COPENHAGEN), but also well merited.It all started BEYOND THE FRINGE.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre I was delighted to view this tele-recording for two reasons. Firstly, it's well and truly hilarious. Secondly, the recovery of this long-lost recording vindicates for television something I've long maintained for cinema films: no movie or TV programme should be considered 'lost' unless it was deliberately destroyed. Sadly, the BBC are notorious for wiping their own programmes and taping over them ... and so, far too many great moments of British television history are indeed gone forever. Unless the transmission patterns are still bouncing off Alpha Centauri.Another IMDb contributor, Elena-48, has already reviewed this recording. Elena's review is perceptive but contains one niggling error: Alan Bennett's sermon is ostensibly about Esau and Jacob, not Ezra. Bennett's sermon is hilarious, as he piously and pretentiously draws metaphors between sardine tins and human existence. ('I wonder: is there a little bit you can't reach under the sardine tin of your life? I know there is under mine.') Here's something which this recording doesn't mention: an audiotape of Bennett's hilariously pretentious sermon is now used as a training tape in the Anglican church, warning newly ordained priests of the sort of claptrap they must avoid.The opening sketch, with its references to the Cold War and Harold Macmillan, is necessarily dated but still funny ... especially when Peter Cook warns the gaunt Jonathan Miller to 'try to look well-fed'. Elsewhere, we have Miller as a prisoner in a death cell: Cook bookends this routine, setting the scene and then returning for the punchline.Cook and Dudley Moore perform their brilliant 'One Leg Too Few' sketch, with Moore as the one-legged 'unidexter' auditioning for the role of Tarzan. Over the decades, Cook and Moore performed this routine hundreds of times, forcing Moore to spend many cumulative hours hopping on one foot. As Moore actually had a clubfoot (only partially corrected), the effect on him was not pleasant. But the routine is uproarious.At intervals throughout, Moore performs his brilliant piano solos. The entire cast perform 'So That's the Way You Like It', skewering Shakespeare hilariously. Less effective is a routine in which all four portray camp homosexuals. A high point is Jonathan Miller's bizarre monologue, 'The Heat-Death of the Universe', pondering the fate of trousers that are abandoned on British Railway trains.My own favourite here -- a quietly hilarious set-piece -- is Cook's solo turn, as a demented monologist sitting on a bench, explaining why he could have been a judge but ended up being a coal miner. Although the character is never named here, Cook privately named this creation E.L. Wisty, and depicted him many times over the decades. Cook's E.L. Wisty routine changed significantly at each performance, as Cook introduced new improvisations.Periodically throughout this taped performance, the camera cuts away to show the audience. I felt this was a mistake, as the laughter on the soundtrack makes it clear that there's a live audience. Much more effective are the close-in shots, enabling us to see the expressions on the faces of the cast as the sadistic Cook ad-libs, trying to 'corpse' his castmates (especially Moore) and make them break character as they burst out laughing.With Cuddly Dudley and 'Cookie' now both dead, and Bennett and Miller having largely forsaken performance in favour of their other talents, it's a delight to be able to see this crucial record of these four comedic geniuses at their peak. And this show is pretty damned funny, too. I'll rate it absolutely 10 out of 10.