Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

idlingdove The reviews so far give it away. I have read most of them and virtually all are positive.This is a film with many hidden messages and themes. I will leave the viewer to discover these at his leisure. Suffice it to say that the overall theme is a sort of dark comedy with unexpected and unconventional twists and turns, and tremendous performances by the actors. Oliver Platt is at his best, Jerry Lewis is himself (!) and Lee Evans is nothing less than sublime. And the rest of the cast do pretty well, too.This film leaves a lasting impression, and should not be missed by serious movie-lovers.

Lee Eisenberg I wouldn't call Peter Chelsom's "Funny Bones" a comedy as much as a look at how we interpret comedy. Oliver Platt plays the son of a famous comedian (Jerry Lewis). When his comedy act bombs, he sneaks off to Blackpool, England, to hook up with some old acquaintances and possibly assemble a better act.Despite the presence of Jerry Lewis*, this isn't any kind of silly movie at all. It has a very serious side. A major focus is how the father expects the son to follow in his path, despite the son's having a different set of talents. But all in all, what results is a very fine piece of work, definitely one that you should see. It's too bad that Peter Chelsom went on to direct "Town & Country" and "Hannah Montana: The Movie".Also starring Lee Evans (Tucker in "There's Something About Mary"), Leslie Caron, Richard Griffiths (Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter movies), Oliver Reed and Ian McNeice.*Other serious movies in which Jerry Lewis starred are "The King of Comedy" by Martin Scorsese and "Arizona Dream" by Emir Kusturica.

Enoch Sneed How can you fairly describe a plot which contains family drama, suspense and a local gangster who is trying to buy some kind of Chinese elixir of life (smuggled from France)? Maybe it's best not to try. Suffice to say the whole thing builds to a tense climax which could see a horrible repetition of an event from the past which we have been shown in flashback.All the performances are excellent. Oliver Platt as failed comic Tommy Fawkes looking for the special something that will make him funny looks unnervingly like Orson Welles in some scenes. Jerry Lewis as his legendary father George is full of wonderful advice. When Tommy is making his Vegas debut he tells him "the room is full of people all ready for you to make them laugh" - just the thing to calm dressing room nerves. I find the idea of Jerry Lewis in Blackpool a great joke in itself.There is great support from Freddie Davies and George Carl as the Parker Brothers. Formerly the top act at Blackpool Tower they are given a new lease of life (literally) and the opportunity to perform again. My one quibble with 'Funny Bones' is that throughout the film we're told how great the Parkers were, yet when they are finally on stage all we get are snippets of what looks like a terrific slapstick routine.Finally there's Lee Evans whose energy (cliche coming up) threatens to burst right off the screen. His 'Valve Radio' routine is almost too fast to be funny, while in the more dramatic phases he successfully gives Jack Parker the necessary aura of danger and unpredictability the story needs. Jack can't help being funny even when being interviewed by a psychiatrist: Q: "Have you lived in Blackpool all your life?" A: "Not yet." Leslie Caron looks beautiful and sophisticated as Jack's mother, Katie. While she is portrayed sympathetically we see she is far from perfect as wife or mother, (and despite the words of her song, Englishmen *do* make love in the afternoon - believe me).A film which is largely set in Blackpool can't be all bad and 'Funny Bones' is far from being all bad. Even this setting is stylised with some strange 1950's retro touches, as if Blackpool hasn't moved on for thirty years or so. I'm afraid honesty compels me to say that Blackpool is in fact dirty, tawdry, a little squalid and the sun certainly doesn't shine everyday. The entertainment centre (the 'Golden Mile') stretches along the shoreline but soon gives way to the usual Victorian terraced streets. People in the north of England like to think of it as our Las Vegas but the Lancashire coast is about as different from the Nevada desert as you can get. In this film we still seem to be seeing Blackpool through the eyes of six-year old Tommy Fawkes. And where are the trams?

sarahcyn Not really a comedy - more a surreal, sometimes weirdly comic piece about comedians, about families, about the awfulness of having a famous father, about genius, about the problem of what makes a comic funny, about the sublime sadness of failure. Lee Evans is absolutely haunting as the tortured comic genius, the natural comic who is so purely a comedian that he can barely communicate except in gags, yet who will never be allowed to perform in public because of his dark past. Leslie Caron is heart-rending as his mother, a brave, faded French beauty stranded for ever singing mildly risque songs in Blackpool pubs, and their tender scenes together are for me the best thing in the whole film.The whole cast is incredible...right down to Oliver Reed camping it up gloriously in a bizarre sub-plot which at first I thought might be part of the Evans' character's fevered imagination. It is a movie absolutely crammed with magic but in one of my favourite scenes, Oliver Platt arrives in Blackpool and instantly sees it peopled with characters from Donald McGill postcards - fat ladies, saucy girls with flouncy skirts, burly men. The ending is a bit wonky and looks to my eye to have been changed from a tragic one to a "happy" one to please audiences. In the two opening sequences, both Evans and Platt utter the words "I'm going to die" in very different circumstances, and mean very different things, and other variations on the theme of death and laughter follow - all this seemed to be pointing down a much darker alleyway than the one we got. Doesn't matter, though. Still a great movie.