What a sorry mess! "The Ruling Class" begins as full of promise and with wit and an irreverent willingness to defy convention and slowly (glacially!) mutates over its 2-1/2 hour running time into a directionless screed against Britain's aristocracy.
Never willing to let the audience grasp their intentions on their own, again and again Peter Medak uses hamfisted characterizations and plot devices to convey author Peter Barnes' view that the titled in Britain are superficial, hypocritical, incestuous, calloused, categorically corrupt and evil, congenitally insane, the personification of Satan, and Jack the Ripper himself! And the members of the House of Lords? Why they're a bunch of stuffy old corpses. No, really! NO, REALLY! Every time you say to yourself "Yeah, I get it", the Two Peters reply "Oh, no you don't; not by a long shot!" and then proceed to tell you the same thing over and over and over and over and over again.
Peter O'Toole is pretty good (although led down by comically bad make-up and wigs), but O'Toole is much better elsewhere. Unless you're an O'Toole completist, save yourself 2-1/2 hours of having tabloid-level editorializing rubbed in your face.
Never willing to let the audience grasp their intentions on their own, again and again Peter Medak uses hamfisted characterizations and plot devices to convey author Peter Barnes' view that the titled in Britain are superficial, hypocritical, incestuous, calloused, categorically corrupt and evil, congenitally insane, the personification of Satan, and Jack the Ripper himself! And the members of the House of Lords? Why they're a bunch of stuffy old corpses. No, really! NO, REALLY! Every time you say to yourself "Yeah, I get it", the Two Peters reply "Oh, no you don't; not by a long shot!" and then proceed to tell you the same thing over and over and over and over and over again.
Peter O'Toole is pretty good (although led down by comically bad make-up and wigs), but O'Toole is much better elsewhere. Unless you're an O'Toole completist, save yourself 2-1/2 hours of having tabloid-level editorializing rubbed in your face.