Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

stilwelljim I work in Curry's, and was going to write my review in Latin, but decided most of you won't be able to understand it. I watched this in 6th form in the late 90s, and could quote a lot of it word for word .... as you do back then, at that age. Now at 34, I still meet up with mates and I don't think I have had a night where I didn't slip in a quote here or there, could be something as small as "lovely stuff" .... or aqua, it's french for water. There are hundreds of varying quality, but you never run dry!Then there are just outrageous, where did the thought process come from lines like; "I know lying is wrong, but if the elephant man came in now in a blouse with some make up on, and said "how do I look?" Would you say, bearing in mind he's depressed and has respiratory problems, would you say "go and take that blusher off you mis-shapened elephant tranny"? No. You'd say 'You look nice... John'"The genius of Bohemiam Rhapsody is that you listen to it and think this is so out there, so unusual, where did it come from, what was the thought process, and that's what I think about Partridge. Some of it is just incredible genius, simple, but brilliant. I wrote a review for curb your enthusiasm, which the Americans hold up as comedy, I can see parallels between that and Partidge, but it's nowhere near as funny!

julianbollerhoff What can i say? Every line is pure gold and quotable. This is the best comedy series i ever watched Nothing can beat scenes like when Alan does his boot video and a cow is dropped on him. The way he says i m trapped under a cow. I could go on forever Whenever i am in a bad mood i get out my Alan partridge stuff and watch it and laugh my ass off every time. I think all the Sascha baron Cohen's and Ricky gervais owe so much to Alan partridge The influence this character had on the comedy scene is incredible and can t be overestimated. I am German and i English people thank you for giving me something that funny The German comedy scene is full of awfulness And everybody who hasn t watched this i can guarantee you that you will not regret it

jayroth6 Up with the PartridgeDVD review: "I'm Alan Partridge" (1997) BBC Video http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129690/ "The bitter life of a failed talk show host turned early morning local radio presenter.""I'd personally like to understand man's inhumanity to man. And then make a program about it." Has there ever been a portrayal of social self-humiliation as unsparing and cringe-inducing as I'm Alan Partridge? A UK TV series, it is at times unbearable to watch. When Alan stumbled over his own words and emotions while doing his best trying to chat up the beautiful front desk clerk at the Linton Travel Tavern ("equidistant between London and Norwich") one must look away. When he bulldozes through a funeral reception in a black jacket emblazoned with the Castrol logo in hopes of putting the professional squeeze on a TV executive, the sheer dread makes the flesh creep.I'm Alan Partridge follows the arch of Partridge's career as he scrambles to organize a professional comeback. The first Alan Partridge series, Knowing Me Knowing You depicted his dire chat-variety show and ended when Partridge accidentally shot and killed a guest while on the air. The prospect of someone expending such huge amounts of money and time and energy trying to get on TV is a hilarious achievement for actor/co-creator Steve Coogan and his collaborators. At every turn, when easy pathos comes close at hand, the show steers clear with another Partridgean outrage to human feeling. Indeed, at the end of the final series episode ("Towering Alan") Partridge triumphs when he takes up a dead BBC Chief Commissioning Editor's hand to forge a signature on the contract for his professional comeback.Alan Partridge is more than a silly-ass Bertie Wooster without Jeeves. He is lightyears beyond Basil Fawlty in being socially beyond-the-pale. He is a man gifted with the ability to always share his worst thoughts and instincts at the wrong time. He tells RTE executives from Dublin this about the Irish Potato Famine: "You'll pay the price if you're a fussy eater. If they could afford to emigrate they could afford to eat in a modest restaurant." He castigates farmers on his late night radio show for animal experiments, only to end up trapped under a Holstein carcass on the deck of a canal boat.If Partridge is a luckless Visigoth, those around him make out even worse. His receptionist finds out she has been fired when she hears it on Alan's radio show as she rides home in a taxi from their tryst. In each episode, the harrowing martyrdom of his PA Liz is explored and given a scale something close to the sufferings of Job. Liz never seems able to catch up to Alan's latest whim or mania. She is treat as what used to be called a "pen-wipe." Michael, a maintenance worker at the Linton Travel Tavern where Alan lives, is continually upbraided by Partridge for this "Jordy" accent.I'm Alan Partridge is a quasi Samuel Beckett comedy about a man so corkscrewed by life that he cannot have a normal or typical social instinct about his circumstances or those of other people. His daydreams are abashedly homoerotic and his Linton Travel Tavern Pay per View orders run to Bangkok Chick Boys.Partridge sees people around him as extensions of the cash nexus, step-stools for his own egomania. Perhaps they do not appear to him as human at all. In the episode "To Kill a Mocking Alan" he meets his #1 fan Jed Maxwell. Partridge takes it as perfectly natural that his talentless TV hackwork would earn him a fan. Not until the end of the episode does he realize the fan is a stalker psychopath, and that his adoration of Partridge is simply an expression of mental illness. "You're a mentalist!" Partridge yells at Jed as he flees from the man's house in horror.The 2 disc DVD package from BBC Video is an affectless treat. In addition to the usual deleted scenes and outtakes, there is audio commentary by Alan Partridge himself, joined by Liz. The DVD menu itself recapitulates the TV menu system from the Linton Travel Tavern: adult PPV options, elevator music, and parking lot security camera footage included.Watch and weep.___________________________________________

JamBap ... and that seems to be the only reason. As I return to watching an episode from the original 'I'm Alan Partridge' series after having watched the second a number of times now, I am struck by the disparity. It seems the original series was somewhat experimental and very much with the objective of exploring many more facets of the fascinating character that is Alan Partridge, and it's study is a tremendous success.This second series seems far more 'commercial', based less upon astute observations of the character and his life and more by exaggerated caricatures and a host of outrageous and unrealistic situations created purely for comedic purposes. It seems to me, series 1 has humour more as a by-product of the journey we go on into Alan's private world, while series 2 has humour as it's sole objective. Vomiting while hosting a fire-place sales conference after piercing his foot on a spike, or re-enacting the opening sequence to The Spy Who Loved Me, are two typical examples. This series seems to have been created in response to the 'call of the punters' wanting to see more 'Alan' to make them laugh, and was the bone that was thrown them, but in doing so, compromising many of the sacred keystones that had been previously laid. While it certainly succeeds in providing a number of genuinely funny situations and lines (after all the 'Coogan crew' are very clever comedy writers), it no longer attempts to remain loyal to the accuracy of the archetype but instead indulges in humour that was once much more subtle and measured. Furthermore, it lazily shortcuts it's way through by self-abusively reusing many of the highly successful original ideas from series 1 and manipulating them to fit the new context, using the petrol station as centre stage while originally being merely incidental, springs to mind. Alan's mimicking of accents too, is just incessant here while far more restrained and calculated in the first series. Another typical example would be the joke where, in series 1, he mistakenly refers to the pop artist, Sinead O'Connor, as "the bald chap", serving to expose his ignorance and disregard for all things Irish in front of his Irish guests, whereas in series 2 this joke rehashed in his comment of "a beautiful blonde man, with a lovely voice" being Annie Lennox is... well I'm yet to understand the point of that joke. While this second series is certainly worth watching for many worthy laughs ("the worth of boast worlds", "cup o' beans", "I've got your kids Dan!", "I wonder who got the power pack", "Bono?!! No he's not here" and so on), those who love Steve Coogan's work for his incredible gift at capturing so poignantly yet hilariously the human condition will be disappointed. It seems a half-hearted effort more motivated by the need to meet public demand and an opportunity to indulge Steve Coogan's acting prowess than with anything further to say. The genius of the earlier Alan Partridge was that he was a man who we primarily find offensive and utterly repulsive, yet with a humanness and vulnerability that we could all identify with in some way and not help but feel incredible sympathy for. There are certainly moments in this series of its former glory and its ability to portray the agonizing realities of this man's life. Playing in a video game arcade alone on a Saturday night is effective and the scene of his trip to see his book being pulped, accompanied with The Windmills of My Mind, must be the series' finest moment; describing it looking like 'word porridge', plaintively crying out when he spots a copy, and then (as the closing scene of the series) in the distance breaking into a trot as he leaves, brings tears to the eyes.Years earlier in one of the original 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' radio shows on Radio 4, Alan Partridge had on, as a guest, a comedian who was trying to make the point that he wanted to make "observational comedy" dealing with "generic human truths", he said "I want to be funny but, with dignity" to which Alan whispers "Do your Frank Spencer". Coogan was here drawing attention to the form of comedy that he obviously was intending to emulate in the creation of Alan Partridge, and incidentally, very cleverly in the same script using him to portray the typical audience that won't grasp that and just wants cheap laughs. Well now sadly, it's Steve Coogan himself who is committing the crime that he once mocked by resorting to the painfully unsubtle techniques of silly accents, caricatures, and repeated jokes to provide cheap laughs at the expense of the comedy 'with dignity' that once hallmarked the humour of Alan Partridge. Ironically, being swayed to cash-in on public demand by producing makeshift follow-ups is in itself is a generic human truth, but I can forgive the makers of works like 'Police Academy', as they had far less to compromise. The hallowed ground that was the world of Alan Partridge should have been treated with more respect, but maybe that's just yet another example of the Alan Partridge in us all.In summary Episode 1: * ½ Episode 2: ** Episode 3: **** Episode 4: *** Episode 5: ** ½ Episode 6: ***