Review of The Bed Sitting Room

After a "nuclear misunderstanding" has left 40 million people around the globe dead, an aimless, straggling group of survivors in and around London appear to be blithely ignorant of their own circumstances. Apocalyptic satire from director Richard Lester came complete with a defensive ad campaign which put down potential naysayers of the picture by proclaiming its humor was "over their heads". Lester could never be called a piquant filmmaker--more often than not he's simply smug--however, his crazy imagination and staging occasionally reveals a despairing underbelly which holds a lot more resonance than the revue-styled humor. Adapted from a play by John Antrobus and Spike Milligan, the film is mostly filled with the same type of punch-drunk, tail-chasing blackout sketches which permeated Lester's 1967 WWII satire, "How I Won the War". It's the kind of dried-up, far-out humor some admirers like to label as 'savage', though the jokes would be far more cutting had the characters not been so unappealing. A great deal of top British talent was employed here, yet the on-screen chattering eventually congeals into a head-splitting din. David Watkin's (appropriately) bleak cinematography is exceptionally strong--too strong and ugly, perhaps, for a farce. Results are strangely fatigued, scattered (albeit intentionally), and risible. *1/2 from ****