Movies From the Hat V #22 – Sean’s Pick – The Loved One (1965)

This is my 2971st Review

Thanks to Sean of Sean Munger.com for this recommendation.

“[In thick southern drawl] Ah shore do feel bad about yore uncle. He’s the one that learned me good English.” – Dusty Acres

Number of Times Seen – 1 (21 Mar 2017)

Brief Synopsis – A young British man wins a free tip to America and decides to visit his uncle who works in the movie business as a dialect coach.

My Take on it – Before Sean suggested this film, I had never heard of it but the premise sounded quite funny based on what I had read.

The themes here are quite dark for a comedy because it deals with the total absurdities of both the movie and funeral business.

I liked the way that they introduced the main character to both of these venues, but unfortuantely, the storylines gt to be too over the top for my personal taste.

The jokes are hit or miss and it just doesn’t come as funny as I had expected yet there seems to be lots of truths in the way many things are portrayed.

The cast works quite fine here and Jonathan Winters plays two characters that are different yet the same in their attitudes.

John Gielgud plays an important part and does some unexpected things that one wouldn’t necessarily assume he would have done.

Unfortunately, all in all, this film feels quite average instead of groundbreaking.

Bottom Line – Very black comedy that deals with both the absurdity of the movie and funeral business. Lots of the jokes are over the top yet there seems to be so much truth in the way things are portrayed. The cast is very talented but in the end things come off as being quite average instead of feeling groundbreaking.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – After WWII, Evelyn Waugh came to Hollywood to work on a movie adaptation of his novel “Brideshead Revisited”. While in Hollywood he went to a funeral at Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Waugh was offended by the pretense of both the American film industry and the American funeral industry, and wove the two together into the novel on which this film was based. (From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy

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