Name: Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story
Genre: Adaptation, Comedy
Released: 2006
Duration: T1H34M
Cast: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Raymond Waring, Dylan Moran, Keeley Hawes

Trailer

Steve Coogan. A comic genius. (Those people who haven't seen or appreciated tv's 'I'm Alan Partridge' you are so very very foolish). Re-teaming with his '24 Hour Party People' director, they've adapted Laurence Sterne's classic, "unfilmable" novel about procrastination.

Picture flips back and forth between the 18th Century of the Tristram story & the hapless efforts of the 21st Century cast & crew making the film. Coogan (playing himself, Tristram and Tristram's dad) fights with his co-star Rob Brydon (playing himself and Tristram's uncle) about what the novel means and how much screen hogging the other is doing. After the day's filming things get worse: Coogan's annoying wife arrives with baby, a journalist harasses him about a scandalous story, & financiers threaten to pull the plug.

2006Rating: M, contains offensive language & sexual references94 minsUK

AdaptationComedy

All Reviews (6)

Director:: Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People, 9 Songs)
Writer:: Frank Cottrell Boyce
Cast:: Steve CooganRob BrydonRaymond WaringDylan MoranKeeley HawesGillian AndersonNaomie Harris

Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story / Reviews

Total Film

Ingenious, hilarious and often intellectually rigorous... there are times when it approaches the level of the sublime... According to Steve Coogan, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy was "a post-modern classic written before there was any modern to be post about." Wrap your brain around that and you'll be prepared for Michael Winterbottom's deliriously entertaining film-within-a-film, which reflects the novel's playful, self-referential structure by twinning dramatised episodes from the book with the trials and tribulations of a cash-strapped crew trying to make sense of it...

Full review

Rolling Stone

It's really inventive and bizarre and marvelously entertaining...

Full review

Roger Ebert

Because their work is so varied, the director Winterbottom and Boyce, his frequent writer, are only now coming into focus as perhaps the most creative team in British film...

Full review

New Zealand Herald

If you ever enjoyed an English comedy show on the telly and you're ready for a laugh, you're going to love this. Don't worry if you haven't the faintest idea what it's about. No one else does either...

Full review

Hollywood Reporter

Long deemed unfilmable, the 18th century novel finds the perfect interpreters in director Michael Winterbottom and actor Steve Coogan...

Full review

Empire Magazine

A successful mix of literary adaptation, meta-fictional discourse and inside-showbiz comedy. Both funny and clever... this reteaming (after 24 Hour Party People) with Steve Coogan is one of Winterbottom's most entertaining pictures, even though it's still an ambitious and intelligent effort to cope with a novel that's one of the cornerstones of English literature...

Full review