646f9e108c Alex is a disgruntled server at a snobby exclusive restaurant who falls on hard times. Forced to deal with the contempt and disgust of the upper class, Alex and cohorts attempt to go on a rampage. Meanwhile, General Karprov and Spider plot to involve the inept anarchists in their plans to derail the Prime-Minister-to-be's campaign.
I've waited over ten years since hearing about this film to get around to finally watching it. I grew up as a fan of Bottom and The Young Ones and the occasional Comic Strip Presents, then dived headlong into The Dangerous Brothers, Kevin Turvey and then the complete Comic Strip box set, so I had high hopes despite the tepid reviews for Eat the Rich. It was God-awful. What was presumably devised as a satire of Thatcherite Britiain could almost have been a satire of 80s alternative comedy, it was that reliant on lazy tropes and shots at easy targets. It was as if written by schoolboys. None of the characters are fleshed out enough to be anything more than stereotypes of the sorts of characters that litter the Comic Strip - which isn't such a bad thing for the generic yuppies, but the lead protagonists had nothing going for them. The plot was flimsy and fumbled with very strange pacing and the whole thing felt like it was going nowhere. For reasons unknown most of the Comic Strip regulars only appear in fleeting cameos, and whilst fun to see, make little impact having no real material to work with. None of the leads are well known for being comic actors, and handled their roles pretty poorly, unable to wring any laughs from the weak script.<br/><br/>It felt like the writers came up with the idea of yuppies eating themselves (again, not a particularly innovative allegory for the 80s, since we saw it in 'The Cook, the Thief...' and the cannibalism angle also in 'Consuming Passions') and then put the absolute minimum effort into crafting a plot around that conceit. To cap it off the whole thing looked dirt cheap.<br/><br/>It gets 2 stars for the enjoyable array of cameos and the Motorhead soundtrack.<br/><br/>Do yourself a favour and watch some of Peter Richardson's better Comic Strip films. There's a reason this has languished in obscurity for so long...
This is not a good movie in the strictest sense of that term, but ... I don't know what it is. The only thing that I can safely say, it certainly isn't bad; it's very strange and has a lot of things going for it. A very waifish Lemmy (from Motörhead), for example, and everyone who was going to amount to anything in acting in the next years, and their mums. And the Beatles. The only thing I'd like to know is how they got this drug-addled phantasmagoria of a movie financed. The movie doesn't really follow a plot but plays along the lines of "I wonder what comes next". And especially along the lines of "I wonder where my next square meal will come from". Like they had shot the scenes during the day and written the script for the next day at night.<br/><br/>Don't get me wrong. This movie was meant to have a better script, and they obviously fubbed it up. Don't tell me that they were well capable of telling an intriguing and coherent story but opted for cinematic surrealism instead. I've made movies myself, and I know fully well how they got to be so intriguingly offbeat and charmingly eccentric. But fortunately this movie here has many other things going for it.<br/><br/>I'd like to big one up for the little people now: Kevin Allen (I think that's him) as "revolutionary gay waiter #1" and Nosher Powell as "Nosher" both give excellent dramatic performances. <br/><br/>If you're after an evening of mutually assured distraction, then stay well clear. If you harbour an interest for the bizarre, then buy the golden bleeding collector's box.