goodmam

Simply one of the funniest movies ever made and, sadly, hardly known to American audiences. A brilliant cast of British actors executes a superbly convoluted farce, so funny it is hard to catch one's breath from laughing. Every actor creates a memorable comic portrait: shy, naive, Michael Caine, confused Peter Sellers, vengeful rivals Ralph Richardson and John Mills (my favorites), greedy Peter Cooke and randy Dudley Moore and many, many more. Wonderful screenplay, design, directing. Too many "best" moments to list. (I certainly never thought I'd see a movie chase involving horse-drawn Victorian hearses!) Give it a try.

This so thoroughly pales in comparison to the stylish 1974 outing that it is hard to see any purpose in doing it. Moving it to a contemporary setting not only deletes the glamor and style, it means that modern methods of criminal investigation make Poirot-style detection obsolete, and modern methods of travel make Orient Express- style travel a sentimental curiosity rather than the fastest way to go.

The real question is why movie people so often remake films that were excellent in their original. If you can't improve on the earlier film, why do it? Maybe the effort to remake old movies would be better concentrated on originals that weren't very good in the first place. There are plenty of those to go around.