IMDb > A Cock and Bull Story (2005)
A Cock and Bull Story
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A Cock and Bull Story (2005) More at IMDbPro »

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A Cock and Bull Story (2005) -- Director Michael Winterbottom (Northam) attempts to shoot the adaptation of Laurence Sterne's essentially unfilmable novel, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman."
A Cock and Bull Story (2005) -- AllTrailers.net - Trailer (Flash)

Overview

User Rating:
6.9/10   6,501 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Down 13% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Writers:
Laurence Sterne (novel)
Frank Cottrell Boyce (screenplay)
Contact:
View company contact information for Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
20 January 2006 (UK) more
Genre:
Tagline:
Because everyone loves an accurate period piece. more
Plot:
Director Michael Winterbottom (Northam) attempts to shoot the adaptation of Laurence Sterne's essentially unfilmable novel, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman." full summary | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
Awards:
2 wins & 12 nominations more
NewsDesk:
Fall Preview Top 20: 1 of 2
 (From ioncinema. 1 September 2005)

User Comments:
Lots of Cleverness and some Wit but -- I do fear -- not quite enough Shandy more (113 total)

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Steve Coogan ... Tristram Shandy / Walter Shandy / Steve Coogan

Rob Brydon ... Capt. Toby Shandy / Rob Brydon

Keeley Hawes ... Elizabeth

Shirley Henderson ... Susannah
Raymond Waring ... Trim
Conal Murphy ... Young Tristram Shandy - Age 6
Joe Williams ... Young Tristram Shandy - Age 9

Paul Kynman ... Obadiah
Mark Tandy ... London Doctor

Mary Healey ... Midwife
Dylan Moran ... Dr. Slop
Jack Shepherd ... Surgeon
David Walliams ... Parson

Jeremy Northam ... Mark
Benedict Wong ... Ed
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Additional Details

Also Known As:
Tristram Shandy (UK) (working title)
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (USA)
more
MPAA:
Rated R for language and sexual content.
Runtime:
94 min
Country:
Language:
Color:
Aspect Ratio:
2.35 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Company:

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
The film features several pieces of music by Nino Rota from the Federico Fellini film (1963), which is also about frustrated efforts to make a movie. more
Quotes:
Tristram Shandy: That is a child actor, pretending to be me. I'll be able to play myself later. I think I could probably get away with being eighteen, nineteen. Until then, I'll be played by a series of child actors. This was the best of a bad bunch. more
Movie Connections:
Soundtrack:
Lilliburlero more

FAQ

This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.
32 out of 52 people found the following comment useful.
Lots of Cleverness and some Wit but -- I do fear -- not quite enough Shandy, 17 November 2005
8/10
Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California

Michael Winterbottom's movie is an Altmanesque production depicting an English crew shooting Laurence's Sterne's eccentric eighteenth-century literary classic. It begins wittily and appropriately with Steve Coogan exchanging mocking banter with costar Rob Bryden, and then Coogan, with cosmetically enlarged and crooked nose and proper costume, becomes Shandy introducing himself. The essentials of the book are sketched in -- first of all, Tristram's meandering account of his childhood and birth (not in any logical order -- nor should they be -- and intersperced with Coogan's caustic comments on the child actors playing him at earlier stages -- which perfectly fits in with Sterne's tendency to interrupt himself on the slightest pretext); then, Uncle Toby (Rob Briden) and his obsession with his exploits at the Battle of Naumur, which include an injury whose location he studiously avoids explicating. The mishaps surrounding Tristram's birth start with his name and move on to the forceps -- then a new device -- whose clumsy use by Dr. Slop cause the altered nose. A falling window caused even more crucial damage.

The moment of birth is dwelt upon -- then the camera cuts back to the crew and the focus shifts to the Coogan-Bryden rivalry again, Steve's girlfriend and their baby, his own problems in bed, his flirtation with a pale-coffee-colored lady crew member who's a great film buff. Coogan wants his shoes made with higher heels so he's taller than Bryden. The filmmakers hold endless confabs over how to do a battle scene and whether to bring in the romance with Widow Wadham (to be played by Gillian Anderson, who agrees from Los Angeles with comic alacrity). Anderson's presence brings in more money for the battle, and then both the battle and the romance are left out of the final cut. Much hilarity accompanies these details, though the main focus is on Coogan's stardom and inability to have a minute to himself.

Unfortunately once Winterbottom pulls away from the birth scene, the Sterne novel, which pretty much ranks with Fielding's "Tom Jones" for brilliance and humor, somewhat falls by the wayside never to be recovered till just before the end, when it seems tacked back in as a hasty afterthought. And hasty is one thing Sterne never is: impulsive and quirky, but never, never, never -- oh, my Heavens No! -- not rushed. At novel's end, his main character, after all, has still not been born.

Maybe it means something that only one member of the cast is reported to have ever actually read "Tristram Shandy" through to the end. Neither Coogan nor Bryden seems particularly eighteenth-century in their role, and Bryden's isn't a particularly inspired recreation of Uncle Toby. Nobody is amiably eccentric to the right degree.

Winterbottom has made an intermittently quite funny movie that never loses its pace, but he has recreated Robert Altman rather than Laurence Sterne, and when you realize this, if you care at all about the novel, the whole enterprise, despite its frantic energy, becomes, for all its wit and good humor, a little bit of a drag. This is an enormously clever film, but what seems brilliant on paper doesn't always play for keeps.

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