A Cock and Bull Story 2005

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: A wildly imaginative foray into spirited comic anarchy. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Sometimes it's the most unfilmable novels that make the best movies. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: It feels made up on the spot, in the mockumentary style Winterbottom and Coogan deployed in their Manchester music-scene goof, 24 Hour Party People. But that film wasn't half as much fun as this one. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story is a hall of mirrors that doesn't tease the brain (it's easier to watch than to read about) so much as goose it into submission. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Read more

Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: A highly amusing combination period film and mockumentary. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: Even if you don't get all the inside jokes, and the jokes that go inside the inside jokes, I still think you'll find this film to be very, very funny. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Probably the best-known but-I-digress novel in English literature, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, has inspired Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, surely the best but-I-digress movie this side of Adaptation. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: Michael Winterbottom's prankish literary adaptation Tristram Shandy: A **** And Bull Story has about a dozen layers of in-joke, and up to the eighth or ninth layer, they mostly work. Read more

Bill Muller, Arizona Republic: Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story brims with humor, from a Monty Python-type take on British colonialism to a winking send-up of the film's star, Steve Coogan. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Beneath the fun lurks a dry and weary sigh at life's refusal to match the tidiness of art. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: For a movie about movies, it's surprisingly humanistic, cheerful and true to life. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: It's all a bit precious and preening, but Coogan is marvelous, almost as good as he was in Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: A Cock and Bull Story is a grand giggle of a film, well worth your time and money and a game well played for the audience. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: ... the first great, mind-tickling treat of the new movie year. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: A hilariously clever picture about the making of a movie that no one will have the slightest interest in. For an experiment about an experiment, it's entirely too much fun. Read more

Jerome Weeks, Dallas Morning News: Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is an eccentric hoot of a film, a delight for lovers of nattering British comedy. Or the business of moviemaking. Or just deadpan, postmodern silliness. Read more

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: Underneath the movie's tricky hall-of-mirrors surface lies a warm, delicate and, yes, distinctly Shandy-esque portrait of the struggle of creation. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: Somehow, despite the odds, it all makes a rich, heady and satisfying stew, capable of making you responsive and alive to all the precious minutiae of your own life. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Given the strength of the talent and material here, it's still a workable compromise for fans -- and a confusion Tristram himself would understand. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR.org: Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: It is a sign of the film's success that extraneous moments are essential to a film that is, essentially, nuts. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: With a subject seemingly so amenable to heartless derision, the film is remarkable for its warmth and generosity and conviviality. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: [Michael Winterbottom's] goofy, messy version of Tristram Shandy puts the Fellini back in 'Fellini-esque.' Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The tone is lighthearted and the performances are effective but, in the end, the feature is so inconsequential as to leave no lasting impression. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: It wonderfully evokes the life on a movie set, which for a few weeks or months creates its own closed society. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: The movie's delights unfold like an intricate, exotic puzzle: Winterbottom has built a detailed, miniature universe inside a sugar egg. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Trying to enumerate everything that's good about this movie could prove as labyrinthine a task as Tristram's storytelling itself. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: This material is the most remote from the letter of Sterne's novel, but in its spirit of verbal play, digression and free-wheeling wit, it pays affectionate tribute to his bawdy jokester spirit. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: It is completely nonsensical, not to mention frequently hilarious. Read more

Ben Walters, Time Out: Instead of hoping to fool us that we're watching life itself, they constantly remind us that telling a story is a fragile, silly, impossible process, and an essential delight. Read more

Leslie Felperin, Variety: While its anarchic spirit is closest to helmer's 24 Hour Party People, pic's film-within-a-film structure makes it yet another genre ticked off for the protean Englishman. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Made literal, many of Sterne's japes cease to be funny, but the viewer is carried along by the backstage plot. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: It's pretty funny. You don't actually watch it so much as indulge it and admire its cleverness. Read more