Comedy

• The Last Detail | DVD | (05/08/2002) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-7.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Last Detail nearly didn't get a release. Columbia, for whom it was made, was alarmed by the movie's barrage of profanity and resented the unorthodox working style of its director, Hal Ashby, who loathed producers and made no secret of it. Only when the film picked up a Best Actor Award for Jack Nicholson at Cannes did the studio reluctantly grant it a release--with minimal promotion--to widespread critical acclaim. Nicholson, in one of his best roles, plays "Bad-ass" Buddusky, a naval petty officer detailed, along with his black colleague "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young), to escort an offender from Virginia to the harsh naval prison at Portsmouth, NH. The miscreant is a naïve youngster, Meadows (Randy Quaid), who's been given eight years for stealing $40 from his CO's wife's favourite charity. The escorts, at first cynically detached, soon start feeling sorry for Meadows and decide to show him a good time in his last few days of freedom. Ashby, a true son of 60s counterculture, avidly abets the anti-authoritarian tone of Robert Towne's script. Meadows is a sad victim of the system--but so too are Buddusky and Mulhall, as they gradually come to realise. A lot of the film is very funny. Nicholson gets to do one of his classic psychotic outbursts--"I am the fucking shore patrol!"--and there are some pungent scenes of male bonding pushed to the verge of desperation. But the overall tone is melancholy, pointed up by the jaunty military marches on the soundtrack. Shot amid bleak, wintry landscapes, in buses and trains and grey urban streets, The Last Detail is a film of constant, compulsive movement going nowhere--a powerful, finely acted study of institutional claustrophobia. On the DVD: The Last Detail disc doesn't have much in the way of extras. There are abbreviated filmographies for Ashby, Nicholson and Quaid (though not for Young) and a trailer for A Few Good Men (1992). The mono sound comes up well in Dolby Digital, and the transfer preserves DoP Michael Chapman's subtle, subfusc palette and the 1.85:1 ratio of the original. --Philip Kemp

• The Money Pit - 80s Collection | DVD | (27/08/2018) from £9.56   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Return to the disco days of the 1980s in this exclusive collection, featuring ALL NEW ARTWORK that celebrates Generation X's neon dream decade, and the movies that defined it. Steven Spielberg presents this devastating comedy that literally brings the house down on Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. After being evicted from their Manhattan apartment, they buy the home of their dreams only to find it's a house of hilarious money-eating horrors. BONUS FEATURES: Making Of Theatrical Trailer

• Drop The Dead Donkey - The Complete Fourth Series | DVD | (24/07/2006) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (-35.00%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This multi-award winning TV comedy show is set in the offices of 'Globelink News' a TV new company whose millionaire tycoon owner prefers a more sensationalist stance in presenting the day's events... Each episode of the show was recorded close to transmission allowing script changes to incorporate maximum topicality! Series 4 Episodes Comprise: 1. The Undiscovered Country 2. Quality Time 3. The Day Of The Mum 4. Births And Deaths 5. Helen's Parents 6. Sally In TV Times 7.

• Absolutely Fabulous - The Last Shout | DVD | (27/11/2000) from £5.65   |  Saving you £10.34 (183.01%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Absolutely Fabulous was first broadcast in 1992 and became an instant hit. Originally a sketch on the French and Saunders Show, Jennifer Saunders saw its potential and created one of the most ground-breaking and debauched comedies on British TV. Centred around the hip London fashion scene the series follows Edina (Saunders) and Patsy (Joanna Lumley), two women who refuse to grow up and are constantly on a mission to lose weight, gorging themselves with cocaine and/or champagne, endlessly throwing parties (or throwing up at parties), and sporting outrageous outfits which were the height of fashion at the time--honestly sweetie! The superb comic performances offered star status to Julia Sawalha as Edina's straight-laced daughter and Jane Horrocks as the sublimely dippy Bubble, and re-invented the careers of Joanna Lumley and June Whitfield. Saunders meanwhile secured her status as one of the top female comedians Britain has ever produced. Although its consciously chic clothing looks a little dated now, its mad characterisations endure and the jokes remain as hilariously slick and apt as ever. Ab Fab remains a landmark in TV since it was the first time that female comedians and writers had had the freedom and exposure to satirise problems close to their own heart, from their own perspective. With Feminist writers claiming that the ideals of feminism were dead in the 1990s and that female concerns were moving in the wrong direction--towards the "Laddette Culture"--and reports claiming that careers were taking a central role, forcing motherhood onto the back-burner, the series sought to embody and satirise these new supposedly "female" characteristics. As the show continued to grow in popularity both in Britain and the States, plans were made to transfer the formula to America. However, as with many other great British series, the content was considered too risky for American audiences due to the amount of sex and drug references. Thus domestic audiences breathed a sigh of release that their beloved Ab Fab would forever stay British to the core. --Nikki Disney

• M.A.S.H. - Season 9 | DVD | (09/01/2006) from £26.99   |  Saving you £3.00 (11.12%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Join Hawkeye and the MASH team for a ninth award-winning season of classic episodes from everyone's favourite (and funniest) mobile hospital! Episodes comprise: 1. The Best Of Enemies 2. Letters 3. Cementing Relationships 4. Father's Day 5. Death Takes A Holiday 6. A War For All Seasons 7. Your Retention Please 8. Tell It To The Marines 9. Taking The Fifth 10. Operation Friendship 11. No Sweat 12. Depressing News 13. No Laughing Matter 14. Oh How We Danced 15. Bottoms Up 16.

• When Harry Met Sally | Blu Ray | (04/02/2013) from £9.75   |  Saving you £3.24 (33.23%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Highly influential, When Harry Met Sally revitalised (in 1988) the moribund romantic comedy genre, made a superstar of Meg Ryan, and in two minutes of heavy breathing gave cinema one of its most memorable scenes. Set over 12 years in New York, young professionals Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Ryan) go from meeting to becoming friends to, well--this is a romantic comedy. Benefiting from an observant and witty script by Nora Ephron, it also offers insight into the differences between men and women. More importantly it's very funny, though the most hilarious scene is also the least believable: Sally is really too conventional to do that in a crowded restaurant. Knowingly modern, the picture's snappy one liners, neurotic honesty and straight-to-camera interludes are in the tradition of Woody Allen's New York Jewish humour, a prime example being Annie Hall (1976), while the inspired use of standards not only made a star of Harry Connick Jnr. but started a trend developed in Everyone Says I Love You (1996) and Love's Labour's Lost (2000). Perfectly played, with excellent support from Carrie Fisher, When Harry Met Sally is the archetypal modern romantic comedy. On the DVD: There's an excellent 33-minute documentary made in 2000 which interviews all the key players talking candidly not so much about how the film was made but why, and revealing just how much of it is actually based upon director Rob Reiner and star Billy Crystal's own experiences and personalities (the story about Reiner acting out the fake orgasm scene for Meg Ryan is priceless). There are seven short deleted scenes (easy to see why they didn't make the final cut) and a commentary track by Reiner, which contains a lot of space and does little more than repeat the information in the documentary. The anamorphically enhanced 1.77: 1 picture though a touch grainy in dark scenes is generally rich and detailed with excellent colour. Audio is stereo, and only blossoms when there is a song on the soundtrack. There are 14 subtitle options including English for Hard of Hearing.--Gary S Dalkin

• Everybody Loves Raymond - Series 1 | DVD | (17/04/2019) from £4.97   |  Saving you £36.02 (724.75%)   |  RRP £40.99

  The popular HBO sitcom 'Everybody Loves Raymond' now comes to DVD! Stand up comedian Ray Romano stars as Ray Barone a successful sportswriter and devoted husband to Debra who must deal with his brother and his parents who happen to live across the street. Frank and Marie love to meddle with his life while older brother Robert sometimes resents his success. Nevertheless Ray manages to keep a bright outlook and a sense of humour as he balances his family and work life.... E

• Orrible | DVD | (20/01/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The idea behind 'Orrible is easy to appreciate, even if the programme itself often wasn't. Take Johnny Vaughan--a supremely talented and likable broadcaster, one of very few ubiquitous television presences whose appearance does not drive the intelligent viewer to grim fantasies of revenge involving a baseball bat and a dark ally--and cast him as the lead in a sitcom. It was, at best, a partial success. The problem with 'Orrible is that Vaughan's forte is improvisation and association, not adhering to a script, not even one he cowrote. His character, a dimwitted, shell-suited West London minicab driver with Walter Mitty-ish fantasies of being an underworld player, has possibilities. But the potential is never fully realised, partly due to surprisingly leaden lines, but mostly due to Vaughan's limitations as an actor: he never quite manages to project anything other than a less-funny version of the screen persona audiences know and like. On the DVD: 'Orrible on disc has an episode selector, and a scene selector for each episode. Subtitles are available in English. There is also the option of listening to a running commentary by writers Ed Allen and Johnny Vaughan which, as it is isn't scripted, occasionally offers glimpses of the unrestrained, free-flowing Johnny Vaughan familiar from his other television work--as such, it's far funnier than anything in the actual programme. --Andrew Mueller

• Things Change (Standard Edition) | Blu Ray | (26/06/2023) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Written and directed by David Mamet (Oleanna), the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright known for his intense dramas, Things Change is a charming, expertly crafted 'mistaken identity' comedy. The Mob force unassuming shoe-shine man Gino (Don Ameche, Trading Places) into taking the hit for a murder he didn't commit. The pay-off? A fishing boat in Sicily when he gets out. Small-time crook Jerry (Joe Mantegna, House of Games) takes Gino on one last jaunt to Lake Tahoe before his term begins, but, when Gino is mistaken for a major league gangster, the duo soon fall prey to local hoodlums... An unexpected change of pace for Mamet, Things Change benefits from an intelligent, witty script and superb central performances from Ameche and Mantegna, who received Best Actor awards at the Venice Film Festival for their efforts. Product Features High Definition remaster Original mono audio Engineering Things (2021, 21 mins): acclaimed writer-director David Mamet reminisces about his career and the making of Things Change Things Happen (2021, 30 mins): actor Joe Mantegna on working with Mamet and Don Ameche Melodies for Mamet (2021, 17 mins): composer Alaric Rokko Jans describes the process of scoring Things Change, and his other collaborations with Mamet Life As It Could Be (2021, 10 mins): appreciation by comedian, musician and writer Rob Deering Original theatrical trailer Image gallery: promotional and publicity materials New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• Bird on a Wire | DVD | (10/04/2003) from £7.02   |  Saving you £-1.03 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn star in this action-packed comedy directed by John Badham about two old flames who meet by accident and are plunged into a cross-country run for their lives.

• Vintage Classics Ealing Comedy Collection | DVD | (23/10/2017) from £29.39   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Collection of five classic British comedies. In 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' (1949) an embittered aristocrat sets out to murder the eight heirs that stand between him and succession to the family title. Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) holds no love for the family he counts as relations, the D'Ascoynes. The D'Ascoynes cast his mother out when she decided to marry a commoner, Louis's father, and on her death refused to allow her to be buried in the family vault. An outraged Louis vows revenge and begins working his way into the trust of the family to provide him with the opportunity to bump off the male heirs (all played by Alec Guinness) one by one. However, complications arise when he becomes romantically entangled with one of the widows of his victims, Edith D'Ascoyne (Valerie Hobson). Will Louis be able to stay the course and murder his way to a dukedom? In 'Passport to Pimlico' (1949) an unexploded bomb goes off in Pimlico, uncovering documents which reveal that this part of London in fact belongs to Burgundy in France. An autonomous state is set up in a spirit of optimism, but the petty squabbles of everyday life soon shatter the utopian vision of a non-restrictive nation. In 'Whisky Galore!' (1949), set during the Second World War, the inhabitants of a small Hebridean island are wilting under a chronic shortage of whisky. When a ship is wrecked on the shore, it is discovered to contain 50,000 cases of malt, which are promptly appropriated by the men of the island. All is well until an English Home Guard commander - determined to see the whisky restored to its rightful owners - calls in Her Majesty's Customs, and the islanders make frantic attempts to hide their treasured alcoholic booty! In 'The Man in the White Suite' (1951) Sidney Stratton (Guinness) is a laboratory cleaner in a textile factory who invents a material that will neither wear out nor become dirty. Initially hailed as a great discovery, Sidney's astonishing invention is suffocated by the management when they realise that if it never wears out, people will only ever have to purchase one suit of clothing. Finally, in 'The Ladykillers' (1955) a group of bank robbers struggle to silence the eccentric old lady who discovers their crime. Mrs Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) lives alone in King's Cross with her parrots. She has been led to believe that the group of men renting rooms from her, Professor Marcus (Guinness), the Major (Cecil Parker), Louis (Herbert Lom), Harry (Peter Sellers) and One-Round (Danny Green), are classical musicians. However, when one of the group's cases gets caught in the door and opens to reveal, not a musical instrument, but a plethora of banknotes, the virtuous Mrs Wilberforce vows to go to the police with the identities of the men. The criminals agree that the old lady has to be killed to silence her, but will this be as straightforward as it sounds?

• Fletch | DVD | (16/02/2004) from £6.73   |  Saving you £-0.74 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Fletch is a fairly sarcastic and occasionally very funny Chevy Chase vehicle scripted by Andrew Bergman (Blazing Saddles, The Freshman, Honeymoon in Vegas) from Gregory McDonald's lightweight mystery novel about an undercover newspaper reporter cracking a police drug ring. Enjoyment of the film pivots on whether you find Chase's flippant, smart-ass brand of verbal humour funny, or merely egocentric. If you don't like Chase, there's really no one else worth watching (Geena Davis is sadly underused). Chase seems born to play IM "Fletch" Fletcher, a disillusioned investigative reporter whose cynicism and detached view on life mirrors the actor's understated approach to comedy. Fletcher offers Chase the opportunity to adopt numerous personas, as his job requires numerous (bad) physical disguises, and much of film's humour centres on the ridiculous idea that any of these phoney accents or bad hairpieces could fool anyone. These not-so-clever disguises are put to use when Fletch becomes involved in the film's smart but continually self-mocking two-part mystery. As well as trying to gather drug-smuggling evidence against the LAPD for a long-overdue newspaper story, a rich and apparently terminally ill stranger also offers Fletch a large payoff to kill him. While the film does a fairly good job juggling both of these plots, not to mention tossing in a love interest as well, they're subservient, for better or worse, to Chase's memorable one-liners and disguises. Followed by two forgettable sequels that lack both the original's wit and Chase's attention span.--Dave McCoy, Amazon.com

• Delicatessen | Blu Ray | (13/01/2014) from £24.99   |  Saving you £-2.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  Delicatessen presents a post-apocalyptic scenario set entirely in a dank and gloomy building where the landlord operates a delicatessen on the ground floor. But this is an altogether meatless world, so the butcher-landlord keeps his customers happy by chopping unsuspecting victims into cutlets, and he's sharpening his knife for the new tenant (French comic actor Dominque Pinon) who's got the hots for the butcher's near-sighted daughter. Delicatessen is a feast (if you will) of hilarious vignettes, slapstick gags, and sweetly eccentric characters, including a man in a swampy room full of frogs, a woman doggedly determined to commit suicide (she never gets it right) and a pair of brothers who make toy sound boxes that "moo" like cows. It doesn't amount to much as a story, but that hardly matters; this is the kind of comedy that leaps from a unique wellspring of imagination and inspiration, and it's handled with such visual virtuosity that you can't help but be mesmerised. French co-directors of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro have wildly inventive imaginations that gravitate to the darker absurdities of human behaviour, and their visual extravagance is matched by impressive technical skill. There's some priceless comedy here, some of which is so inventive that you may feel the urge to stand up and cheer. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com On the DVD: the special features are pretty standard, with a trailer, "making of" featurette and footage of the rehearsal process. The audio commentary is supplied by Jeunet, which, although interesting, is in French and thus necessitates the use of subtitles which then obliterate the movie's own subtitles. Once the commentary is on it is virtually impossible to turn this option off without reloading the disc. However, the Dolby stereo works wonders for this film, which is rich in sound, and surprisingly the 1.85:1 letterbox ratio is perfect for a film that is grainy by design. --Nikki Disney

• Bring It On: All or Nothing | DVD | (05/09/2011) from £7.12   |  Saving you £-1.13 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A sassy and spirited sequel to Bring It On with new moves new music and eye-popping dance sequences... Britney Allen (Hayden Panettiere) is living the dream - the cheerleader's dream. At the elite seaside campus of Pacific Vista High School Britney is captain of the cheerleading squad and the envy of everyone at school - including one overly-ambitious teammate. When Britney hears about a forthcoming audition for a top cheer squad to appear in recording star Rihanna's upcoming television special she is determined that her Pirates cheer squad will capture the coveted spot. But Britney's life turns from cheer-topia to cheer-tastrophe when her father's job takes her family to Crenshaw Heights a multi-ethnic working-class neighbourhood east of Los Angeles! At her new school Britney is viewed with suspicion by most of the students especially by Camille (Solange Knowles) the overly confident and acerbic leader of the Crenshaw Heights Warriors cheerleading squad. No one is more surprised than Camille however when Britney proves herself and secures a spot on the Warriors' cheer squad. Britney and her new teammates work feverishly to prepare for the audition for Rihanna incorporating some edgy new moves into their performance. Now the pressure is on as the Warriors find themselves locked in a high-stakes cheer-off with Pacific Vista Britney's old school! During the climactic no-holds-barred fight to the finish friendships loyalties and talents are tested - but only one team can come out on top.

• Instant Swamp | DVD | (24/05/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Haname is a lively young journalist blessed with an exceedingly vivid imaginative working for a woman's magazine on the brink of bankruptcy. Her daily diet of gloopy health drinks are't enough to shield her from what she perceives as a particularly severe run of bad luck which all began on her eighth birthday when her father stormed out of the house not only abandoning her but flinging all her toys into a nearby swamp including a cat talisman which she thinks must have been cursed. Haname sets out to retrieve her lost possessions a quest which reacquaints her with her father now a hippie working at a junk shop who goes under than name 'Light Bulb' and brings her into contact with a punk named Gus.

• As Time Goes By - Series 6 | DVD | (30/01/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Long ago Lionel a dashing young British Army officer met Jean a lovely student nurse and fell deeply in love. When Lionel was shipped off to fight in the Korean war the two lost touch. Now they meet again and slowly begin to rekindle their romance. Episodes comprise: 1. The Stalker 2. The Psychotherapist 3. The Dinner Party 4. What's Wrong With Mrs Bale? 5. Alistair's Engagement 6. The House Next Door 7. A Surprise For Jean

• Up The Chastity Belt | DVD | (14/02/2011) from £9.95   |  Saving you £6.04 (60.70%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A funny thing happened to Lurkalot serf to Sir Coward de Custard on the way to Custard Castle. Lurkalot sells lusty love potions and rusty chastity belts in the market place but on this day Sir Graggart de Bombast arrives to sack the castle and to get the lovely Lobelia Custard in the sack! Lurkalot must help Custard cream the knight in pining armour...

• Police Academy Complete | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £20.15   |  Saving you £49.84 (247.35%)   |  RRP £69.99

  Police Academy The call went out. The recruits came in. No longer would police cadets have to meet standards of height weight or other requirements. Brains were optional too. Can't spell IQ? Don't know the number 911? No matter. Police Academy grads are ready to uphold law and disorder! Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment When the newly graduated misfits in blue tangle with these pinheaded punks the result is an open-and-shut case of nonstop hilarity!. Steve Gu

• Freddie Starr - Live | DVD | (25/08/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Comic genius Freddie Starr recorded live and uncensored at the Beck Theatre in Hayes Middlesex.

• Nickelodeon | DVD | (13/10/2008) from £9.79   |  Saving you £3.20 (32.69%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Nickelodeon recalls the early days of the motion picture industry and is based in part on Peter Bogdanovich's interviews with pioneering directors Raoul Walsh and Allan Dwan. Lawyer-turned-movie-director Leo Harrigan (Ryan O'Neal) and Buck Greenaway (Burt Reynolds) an actor are both sent to California to shut down a renegade group of silent movie makers. Joining forces with cameraman Franklin Frank (John Ritter) leading lady Kathleen Cooke (Jane Hitchcock) and precocious prop-girl Alice Forsythe (Tatum O'Neal) Harrigan and Greenaway somehow find themselves working with the movie crew instead of shutting them down. Greenaway becomes a star and Harrigan a respected director but both battle over the affections of Cooke...