The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Boy Erased
Ant-Man and the Wasp
American Vandal
Log in with Facebook
OR
By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies, and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango.
Please enter your email address and we will email you a new password.
Critics Consensus: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon add madcap, knowing performances to the mix, and the result is a fun, postmodern romp.
Critic Consensus: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon add madcap, knowing performances to the mix, and the result is a fun, postmodern romp.
View All Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story News
All Critics (128) | Top Critics (39) | Fresh (115) | Rotten (13) | DVD (5)
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.
[Michael Winterbottom's] goofy, messy version of Tristram Shandy puts the Fellini back in 'Fellini-esque.'
A wildly imaginative foray into spirited comic anarchy.
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.
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.
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.
... it's a great deal of sheer fun, showcasing Coogan as one of the best comic actors working today.
Coogan may be game and there are plenty of nods to assorted sexploits, but this riffing on his caddish public image was done a lot more amusingly and a lot less smugly in a 10-minute skit in Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes.
Films where you suddenly hear yourself laughing, where you leave the theatre a little weakened by the violence of your own hilarity, are extremely rare.
Stands alongside -- if not above -- Adaptation as one of the best films about the process.
A typically rambling, freewheeling effort from Michael Winterbottom...
Director Michael Winterbottom may not have proved that you can film this unfilmable book, but he definitely proved he can film a funny movie about trying to film it.
'Tristram Shandy' is a great deal less clever than it thinks it is.
Super Reviewer
Having seen and fell in love with The Trip first, it was fun to spend more time with characters that I had come to know and love. On top of being a smart and layered film, Coogan and Brydon continue to give the audience their patented witty passive-aggressive banter. While I did not find myself sick with laughter in the same ways as i was with The Trip, it is still very funny. If you love the characters in all of their humor and misery, then this film is for you.
When did British comedy become boring? My guess. Sometime around this film's release. There's an average human drama subplot, but the rest is pretty stuck up [their own a***] comedy.
your mileage may vary according to your taste in 18th century literature, british comedy and/or the post-modern film stylings of michael winterbottom/steve coogan. i enjoyed it very much, tho it's messy and not everything works. one clever bit, amongst many clever bits, was the score's subtly referencing everything from barry lyndon to 8 1/2, perhaps an allusion to the many charges of plagiarism against the novel
There are no approved quotes yet for this movie.
200 Essential Movies
Chosen by RT staff!
200 Freshest Movies
The best-reviewed since 1998
30 Great Scenes
30 great scenes in Rotten movies
Best of Netflix
Movies and shows to binge now
More News & Features
View All