Britannia Hospital

1982 Lindsay Anderson movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Mick Travis, the guy in If... and O Lucky Man!, suddenly finds himself in a movie that isn't nearly as good. In this one, he's a documentarian surreptitiously making a film to expose a hospital's questionable procedures. Meanwhile, the Queen is set to visit, and a doctor is working on a crazy experiment known as the Genesis Project which he claims will perfect mankind. And also meanwhile, a bunch of protesters threaten to ruin everybody's plans.

This didn't work for me as a comedy or as social satire, the latter maybe because I'm missing a bunch of context. All I know is that where Mick Travis ends up is completely unexpected but unfortunately not in such a good way. There are lots of unexpected goings-on in Britannia Hospital, like in the other two movies of this trilogy, but instead of the unexpected being used to season the proceedings, this thing is sauced in the unexpected. It's like the Monty Python boys decided to smoke Keith Richards' dad's ashes, lost interest in trying to be funny, and made a loosely-connected series of sketches anyway. It's more bizarre than funny, and this is coming from a person who likes his humor dry. Immensely disappointing stuff, but worth checking out if you've ever wanted to see a stoned Luke Skywalker laughing hysterically at a documentary about chickens.