This is the kind of small British movie in which you recognise the faces of all the supporting cast but can't remember where from. Richard E Grant more or less reprises his tightly-wound, neurotic persona from Withnail and How To Get Ahead In Advertising. The script by Alan Plater is okay, maybe trying a bit too hard for wisecracks; the score by Mike Batt (of Wombles fame?) suggests he wished he'd been given a Jane Austen movie. The whole thing is a bit too glossy, in fact. It doesn't capture the gleeful squalor of the book, nor does it succeed in explaining Comstock's actions: it's not simply that he wants to be a writer, he wants to drop out of the rat race and reject capitalism and respectability altogether, but finds it a lot more difficult than the thought. In missing this, the film misses the point of the story-less story and becomes just a well-made kitchen sinker.
I don't blame the Yanks for re-naming it - it's not the best title; but they surely could have come up with something better than 'A Merry War', which makes it sound as though the focus is Grant's bickering with HBC - thus missing the point by an even wider margin.
I don't blame the Yanks for re-naming it - it's not the best title; but they surely could have come up with something better than 'A Merry War', which makes it sound as though the focus is Grant's bickering with HBC - thus missing the point by an even wider margin.