EAT THE RICH


UK, 1987, 90 minutes, Colour.
Lanah Pellay, Kathy Burke, Katrin Cartlage, Dave Beard, Nigel Planer, Paul Mc Cartney, Rik Mayall, Derren Nesbett, Sue Lloyd, Jools Holland, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Koo Stark, Bill Wyman, Sandy Shaw, Fiona Richmond, Miranda Richardson, Peter Richardson.
Directed by Peter Richardson

In the vein of the screenplay of the film, one might say that this film is an acquired taste.

A great number of British comedians and stand-up comics appeared in this somewhat anarchic story of a dissatisfied waitress who decides to do something about life and is mixed up in a plot by an odd general who is targeting the campaign of the would-be Prime Minister. The film came out in the Thatcher years and the atmosphere of British politics in the 1980s – the Spitting Image era.

The film was directed by Peter Richardson, a director of The Comic Strip Presents… From 1988 to 2012.

1. A social comedy, anarchic? The points to be made? The Comic Strip style?

2. The London setting, the city, restaurants? Politics and the civil service? the country? Real/stylised? Credible?

3. The Comic Strip? Exaggeration in style, farcical, black and outrageous, offensive? How much insight?

4. Bastards, the name of the restaurant? The staff, entertaining, the style of the clientele? Behaviour and comment? Eat the Rich, the clientele, hypocrisy? The cannibalistic attitudes? Comeuppance?

5. Alex, actor, race, androgynous? Behaviour and relationships? The terrorists? The coat, the gun? Ron, the hold-up? Anti-Nosher? The group, Jimmy, Fiona, the tactics, the slaughter? The commander? Fortune? Deaths and Alex?

6. Ron, the tramp, friend, action, Eat the Rich? Killed?

7. The commander, blunt, sympathy, home, the spider? Powell, the tactics, Fiona? Waiting? Eat the Rich, the photo? The baby? Ironic?

8. Nosher Powell, crass? Sandra flaunting? The Who Secretary? Israeli ambassador? The role of Fiona? The popularity, the banquet? The Queen? Nosher and Ron? Ugly faces of Britain? Sandra’s death?

9. The Queen, the mockery?

10. Fiona and Nosher, the purging, the cause? Both? Jimmy, the escape?

11. Jimmy, the farmer, quiet, joining in, the survivor?

12. The important of the wide range of guests, their cameo spots, contribution to the film? Society, clientele, servants?

13. Britain in the 1980s?