Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

Steve Coogan plays the actor Steve Coogan who is starring in a movie as Tristram Shandy, as well as Tristram’s father Walter, in an adaptation of the novel Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. Rob Brydon is playing the character of uncle Toby, a man obsessed with recreating the battle where he was wounded in the groin. The funniest moments of the film come from Coogan trying to avoid being upstaged by Brydon. (Make sure to sit through the closing credits where Brydon and Coogan do dueling impressions of Al Pacino.)

It’s a movie about making a movie of an unfilmable book. One reviewer used this mash-up to describe it: “Think Being John Malkovich meets Adaptation as a period piece, and you’re nearly there.” It pays homage to the classics that have tread this path before with cues to Fellini’s 8 1/2, Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, and Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract. It even features a film fanatic, Steve Coogan’s assistant, that goes on ad nauseum boring the cast and crew with paeans to German filmmakers like Fassbinder.

There are many other layers in the narrative to explore but I’ll have to wait for the movie to be released in theaters in January, and ultimately make it out on DVD. In the movie they promise extra scenes and interviews on the DVD when it comes out. Of course, this could be as empty as the promise that this movie is about the life of Tristram Shandy. Try as it might the story of Tristram Shandy only makes it up to the point shortly before he is born. Although that’s probably the point, that one’s life is a glorious unplanned mess from beginning to end and no book, or movie could ever capture that. Revel in it while you can.