Product Details

• Actors: Peter Ustinov, Prunella Scales, Georgina Cates, Samuel West, Robert Portal
• Directors: Gary Sinyor
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Walt Disney Video
• VHS Release Date: March 13, 2001
• Run Time: 87 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305958092
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #43,088 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Eaton! Eaton!", November 20, 2000

By	"trilobiteten" (Toontown) - See all my reviews

I caught 'Stiff Upper Lips' on PBS tonight. It was the first time ever that I laughed my arse off watching 'Masterpiece Theatre.' (When the English lawn was unpacked from its crate and set up, in the middle of an Italian plaza, for a proper tea, I had to stick my fist in my mouth to keep from howling and waking the neighbors.)

The plot is familiar enough, pieced together from various tedious English period dramas: Emily, a pretty old maid of 22 (Georgina Cates, from 'An Awfully Big Adventure'), and George, a strapping scum-of-the-earth, are denied true love because of (yawn) stifling social conventions and pretensions, as personified by some very funny stereotypes. Here, let's see if I can rattle them off: there is the prim auntie (Prunella Scales), the upper class twit with the teddy collection, the unctious vicar, the bloated India imperialist (Peter Ustinov), the fey academic fixated on epic poetry and dead languages -- why, there's even the dedicated butler who practices making face-less in the mirror.

The long-running jokes about sexual repression are dead-on ("What ripping unmentionables you have!" coos Emily to George), and whenever the tension lets up -- that is, whenever sex is on -- one breathes a little sigh of relief knowing that the English are only human and occasionally do have their passions. (I used to wonder how they reproduced.) Come to think of it, this is the most and best I've seen of the English making babies since -- since -- well certainly not since I started watching 'Masterpiece Theatre.'

If the movie is, as the reviewer before me complains, a trifle slow and at parts predictable, it's only the better to parody those godawful respectable Merchant Ivory soap operas. I can see why this self-deprecating humor might not appeal to American audiences used to the obvious (if wonderful) farce of Mel Brooks, but for Brits and others savvy to their dry dry wit and weary of Jane Austens and Kenneth Branaughs, 'Stiff Upper Lips' is a pure delight.

Making it a bleeding shame that the video is priced at over 100$. Ah well. "As the poet Homer wrote..."

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jolly good show, old chap, January 23, 2005

By	M. A. Bechaz "bookaholic" (Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Given the mixed reviews I read on the Amazon website about this one, I wasn't sure if it would be any good. Fortunately, though, I was pleasantly, nay, SIDE-SPLITTINGLY surprised! It was brilliant!

Don't be fooled into thinking this is just a parody of Merchant Ivory movies. It also pays extensive homage to Ken Russell's brilliant 'Lady Chatterley' as well, not to mention having a bit of a dig at Jane Eyre/Sense and Sensibility/et al.

You don't have to be a huge Merchant Ivory fan to like this, although it probably helps. Even though the last time I saw a Merchant Ivory movie was many years ago, I still got all the jokes in this. And even my boyfriend, who has never watched anything in the Merchant Ivory genre and probably never will, was falling about laughing. Some jokes are subtle, some are over the top and bawdy, but all are hilarious.

Prunella Scales and Peter Ustinov, two veteran actors at the top of their game, are absolutely wonderful in this, as are the rest of the cast.

Thoroughly recommended!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How well do you know your British movies?, March 16, 2002

By A Customer

Granted this isn't a high brow humor movie, but it isn't supposed to be. It is hysterical if you take it for what it is- a movie about sex that made fun of all the aspects of Merchant Ivory films and Masterpiece Theatre that needed to be laughed at. Some of the parodies were really very clever, my favorite being the Mouret Fanfare played on the sitar, while others were on the overdone side. On the whole though this movie is great if you're well versed in quite a bit of British film.