1/5 Not worth buying
  by Symphony Girl (Irving, TX USA)
If you are considering adding this film to your Alan Rickman collection, don't bother. Rickman's performance is nice, but the film is so overwhelmingly dull that you will simply end up fast forwarding to the Rickman bits. I can't imagine who thought this script was worth making.

5/5 Comedy in the Board Room
  by R. Crane (Washington, DC United States)
A very clever, witty script and excellent performances make this a film well worth watching.

The plot focuses on an American businessman who is sent to London to lead a European business merger, and his British counterpart, who has been passed over for the job. Played by the brilliant Alan Rickman, the British character devises all kinds of schemes and foils to undermine and demolish his American competition. The American figures out the schemes and retaliates with an eye for an eye, and it is very funny.

This is a perfect movie for a light hearted escape. Should have received more attention when it first came out.


5/5 Clever, Witty, Sardonic - Everything a Good Film Should Be!!
  by Pied Piper (Cullowhee, N.C. United States)
This movie was absolutely wonderful!!!! This was almost like a British version of Office Space - except funnier, in that the humor was more highly developed. Don't get me wrong, I loved Office Space, but this movie has a drier sense of humor about it, which is more along the lines of the humor I love. If you are a fan of British humor, you will love this movie! For anyone who has ever worked in an office and been made to suffer corporate arrogance and stupidity, this film might give you a few ideas about how to overcome such obstacles, and possibly subvert the system. Personally, this movie had me laughing out loud until I was in pain in places.

Alan Rickman is excellent in this film - I would say the most comical that I have seen him, and that is saying something. His humor is in that he can play a character that isn't trying to be funny for humor's sake, but rather that his machinations place him in almost absurd situations, and that, in my opinion, is the best kind of humor. If you are even a fraction of the Alan Rickman fan that I am, then you will LOVE this movie. Also, be certain to watch the outtakes and deleted scenes, for they are equally amusing.

All in all, I was completely stunned that a film this wonderful never seemed to make it into the American radar for film. But in someways this is a good thing because this movie does not sacrifice its characters to Hollywood glitz. This is a very character driven film amuses from the first scene right up to the end. I can't even begin to verbalize how good it was! Were I to fill my review with nothing but exclamation points, it would not fully convey my enthusiasm about this movie!!!!!!

5/5 Great comedic outing for Alan Rickman
  by jnicky63 (kansas city, mo)
The movie as a whole sometimes moves a bit slow, but it is well worth it if you are an Alan Rickman fan. Quite a departure from his bad guy/romantic guy roles. His comic timing and deadpan delivery had me howling at times...while the physical comedy was just plain funny. Worth the money to see him in such a different incarnation. The deleted scenes/outtakes are priceless, and I agree with the others the dance scene over the credits is both sweet and funny.

3/5 Rickman, yes. Movie, no.
  by Laurie (Decatur, GA)
This movie has the fatal stench of "vanity project." To be an ambitious actor of unknown quality is to be an actor who has to write a movie for himself, then has to direct it so he can cast himself. Mike Binder is the actor/writer/director who knitted this series of cliches and old Neil Simon together as a gift to his own career. No one told him that "The Out of Towners" had been made some 30 years ago, and even the much, much more likable and talented Jack Lemmon couldn't make it's irritating plot tolerable. No one told Mike Binder that there is only gonna be one Ben Stiller. So hopeful he is to be Ben Stiller that he even fetched one of Ben Stiller's former company members, Janeane Garafolo, to play his wife. As the wife, she gets to complain a lot, follow her man from port to port while having no other wish for herself than to settle down and give birth to his children. When you write your own husband role, you get to make yourself a wife like that-- one who's nearly as focused on you as you are.

The writing and directing are uninspired and often lazy. Mike Binder's acting, that present he created for himself, is indeed a watered down Stiller imitation. Unlike his role model, he does run around a lot, which seems to be his acting shorthand for funny. There's his writer/director mediocre attempt to make secondary characters lovably kooky, but by golly, they are poorly realized, never engaging or endearing, just thrown in because, hey, that's what Ben Stiller would do. Mike Binder doesn't seem to have the skill set to make what he's attempting work, hard as he tries to mimic other well-worn comic formulas.

Binder's more self-brutalizing mistake is one even actor/writer/director Kevin Costner made-- allowing himself to be measured against Alan Rickman. Again, why didn't anyone tell him? You cannot out perform Alan Rickman. Rickman is lightly used in the first half of the movie, then dominates the last half. He seems to relish his chance at screwball comedy, and he plays what he's given with deft delight. Although he is the root of all the Binder character's frustrations, Rickman's John Gissing is still the most engagingly appealing character of the bunch. It's a relief when John Gissing is finally found and begins to occupy real screen time.

While Alan Rickman consistently out classes Mike Binder's performance, God bless Alan Rickman's involvement. Without his name on the credits, no one would have sought this movie out. It would have remained with the other vanity projects of needy actors turned writer/directors. Gone. Forgotten-- just the source of the faint sour smell of desperately failed self-promotion wafting up from the bottom of the clearance bin at Blockbusters.