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List Price: $29.95 | | Label: Criterion
Salesrank: 98278
Released: July 10, 2001 |
| Our Price: $49.95 |
| Used Price: $34.89 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Richard E. Grant is the endlessly suave Dennis Bagley, a high-strung advertising executive whose shoulder sprouts an evil, talking boil. The boil speaks only to Bagley, is silent to the rest of the world, and seems to be growing. This caustic satire reunites the talented team behind the cult classic Withnail and I to create a tour de force of verbal jousting and physical comedy.
Description of How To Get Ahead in Advertising - Criterion Collection:
After the release of Withnail & I, British writer-director Bruce Robinson continued his satirical assault on British culture with this fiendishly funny rant, the title of which can be taken figuratively and literally as an object lesson in the art of consumer manipulation. Nobody dupes consumers better than Dennis Bagley (Richard E. Grant); his genius in crafting seductive ad campaigns has earned him a country estate, countless awards, an admiring boss, a loving wife (Rachel Ward), and, well, a gigantic boil on his shoulder that's like a throbbing zit from hell. Dennis is so tormented by a difficult campaign for pimple cream--and so filled with self-loathing after years of promoting dubious products--that his inner demon, the media-savvy and profiteering side of himself, has manifested itself as a talking pustule with a mind (and a face and a voice) of its own.
Robinson's scathing critique of mindless consumerism begins with one of the funniest monologues ever written, and Grant instantly claims his role with manic perfection. A time bomb of repressed anxiety, Dennis blossoms in righteous protest against his profession, only to find his evil boil growing dominant, worrying his wife (Ward's performance is charmingly sympathetic), and inevitably seizing control. The movie's message is obvious and heavy-handed, and Robinson's blazing wit grows increasingly bilious and urgent, but you can't blame him for sniping at easy targets. As corporate synergy and rampant commercialism reach insane proportions, How to Get Ahead in Advertising grows more relevant than ever, holding a mirror to the grotesqueries of capitalism in extremis. --Jeff Shannon
How To Get Ahead in Advertising - Criterion Collection Reviews:
how to make great art 
2009-09-19 - Imagine a world where corporations pay lots of money to men who in turn advertise their products by deceiving and manipulating people. In the city where I live alongside every major street or highway are so many billboards they crowd out the sky. Privately owned television stations run almost as many ads as they do programming, and even then the programming is often just another form of advertisement. History, art, and genuine cultural expressions are appropriated to sell products or "entertainment", i.e. profit-based fun. Game shows promote and exploit greed. People are turned into consumers. Culture(or lack of it) is manufactured, identities can be bought in malls, and ideologies become bumper stickers. Anything meaningful is transformed into an accessory with a price tag, and if it can't be sold is discarded. This movie is not a fairy tale that will make you feel secure, and it doesn't come with a happy ending to comfort you. Instead it strips that fantasy of it's glossy image and tells you that reality is not a commodity to be owned, it tells you that it's the way we interact with the world that makes us who we are, and that if it's just about keeping it all for yourself then it's a very shallow existence. It encourages us to examine the way in which a profit-based economy and consumerist mindset dictate the way we live, and how the freedom to choose between products is not the same as freedom. In doing so it gives you something much more meaningful that can't be made into a possession, and it does so in a way that is sincere, funny, and powerful. But it's not without hope, it makes clear that rejection of greed-driven philosophy can allow us to pursue a vision of a "better" world.
bizarre and hilarious
2009-04-16 - One of my three favorite movies (along with Dr. Strangelove and Brutti Sporchi e Cattivi.) Just when you think the movie cannot get any more bizarre than it already is, it does. Features the best acting performance of all time by Richard E. Grant.
one of the funniest films ever made
2006-06-12 - This movie is a riot. Richard E Grant gives an amazingly intense performance. His entire role seems to consist of nothing but brilliantly scabrous monologues. His acerbic take on everything around him starts at a fever pitch and then giddily topples over into outright inspired lunacy. See this film if for no other reason than to get a glimpse of him naked save for a kitchen apron, gleefully stuffing raw chickens down the toilet drain and all the while explaining, " Everything I do makes sense, everything i do has a reason!"
I prefer this style of over the top attack much more than the drier and more subtle (!) mode employed by both writer-director Bruce Robinson and Richard E. Grant in their first collaboration, WITHNAIL & I.
The heights of comic outlandishness achieved in HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING is something that is rarely achieved by any film and it is doubly commendable that everything done here ( no matter how tastelessly crazy) still never stoops to the childishly vulgar levels that most American comedies regularly splash about in like mental asylum inmates happily playing with their own feces. Yes, despite everything this film attempts ( and achieves) it still retains a sense of sophistication that shows what thuddingly awful garbage ( i am looking directly at you AUSTIN POWERS, SCARY MOVIE, etc, etc) is usually regarded as the height of comedy. This film knocks them all dead.
Important to watch 
2005-08-28 - Bill Hicks said "if you're in marketing, do us all a favor and shoot yourself". If you've seen How to get ahead in advertising, you'd know exactly what he meant. This movie is a great take on showing the warped mindset of someone who works in the industry.
Its a talking boil 
2004-12-04 - Its a movie about a talking boil....what more do you need to know?
