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Having known my share of stuffed shirts, I was howling at the torture of John Cleese in this film. You know who all those stuffed shirts are, too: those who insist on a spotless, shiny, tidy room; who balance out their finances every day, it seems; who have carved a nice manageable life for themselves. What makes the comedy work, though, is that in spite of all the setbacks Cleese suffers, the movie doesn't take any sadistic delight in them. When the car, and Cleese, gets stuck in the mud, we all cringe at his predicament, and laugh along with him, since we'd probably be going through the same thing ourselves, but for the grace of God. No toilet humor, no toilet language. Just a madcap comedy of errors fit for all. Right!

A scrupulously punctual headmaster in an English comprehensive school sets off for the Headmaster's Conference to deliver a keynote speech. One little slip sees him boarding the wrong train, which leads to a chain of consequences conspiring to keep him from his goal. This is one of the finest farces I've ever seen brought to the screen, written naturally enough by theatre farce-meister Michael Frayn. The frenetic energy of John Cleese in his prime really lifts this above the norm, as he hitches a ride with a student, bumps into and kidnaps an ex-girlfriend and winds up naked in a monastery. The climactic scenes at the HMC amount to perhaps the finest pay-off seen in farce. This is, indeed, a historic moment.

Glad to see this film is building up a fan-base. Any references I've come across in film guides have been pretty dismissive, and it seems to have been rubbished on its release. I think "minor classic" is the perfect description for it: it's so pleasantly low-key, restrained and, well, English. It respects the tradition of farce and, despite the frenetic pace and the subject matter, retains a kind of gentle, even staid appeal. The race to get to the conference might be nail-biting but the sleepy English countryside, the apple-eating farmer, the scene of John Cleese soaking in a bath-tub, evoke a world of endearing laziness. A film for bank holidays, and perhaps more suited to TV than the cinema. A Fish Called Wanda has funnier moments but, on the whole, I think I prefer this.

Interesting that so many people have said they can watch it again and again. I've seen it four or five times and I'm planning on buying it on my way home from work today, then watching it over dinner. Don't know what made me think of it and look it up. Actually I saw it being given away free with a newspaper last week, that must be it. I wasn't going to add to a tabloid's circulation, though.

The secret of this comedy is its pacing. It shows the events of one working day in the lives of a range of people from schoolchildren to pensioners, whose course is hilariously skewed for them all by the obsession of the film's central character. It uses a traditional "obsessive tunnel vision" strategy of comedy - a character's failure to see the chaos he is causing in the lives of those who are unlucky enough to lie in the path between him and his goal.

Alison Steadman plays the sassy schoolgirl who does everything she can to help her headteacher achieve this obsession, tearing him between his drive for the peak of respectability orthodoxy and her less than respectable means to achieve this goal. The comic tension between the unlikely pair seems a hilarious pastiche of the sexual tension in most hero + heroine situations.

Americans may not immediately recognise the small-town England setting, which gives it a tone of Ealing comedy, but the film should greatly amuse viewers from any background.

John Cleese was at his harried best in this little gem of a movie. Certainly one of the most under-rated films in this genre of all time. Intelligent, (maybe too clever and too British for the Americans at the time of release) extremely funny and a film one can watch over and over without it becoming stale. Cleese's timing is superb and as for his wife and daughter.. an absolute pleasure to observe!