The Comic Strip, Part 31 - Gettin' ecstatic an' sorta dramatic

"The Pope Must Die" - Feature Film 1991

First of all, this is another film not in the box. It is also not on DVD. I picked it up on VHS for $4.

The things I do.

Secondly, I have to make mention of the title. When the film was released in America, it was felt that the title was offensive. So it had to be changed. Unfortunately, there was not enough budget to actually come up with the layout for a new title, so a "t" was clumsily added to the end of the title, creating "The Pope Must Diet."

So even before we hit "play" we're down a few notches, expectation-wise.

The film itself is a mostly innocuous vanilla pudding cup of a comedy. We get the over the top bad guys - Paul Bartel is excellent in a typical Paul Bartel sort of role, Herbert Lom is there doing his thing - he's like the uncle who is great to see at family gatherings once or twice a year, but you don't want to be stuck in a car with for five hours, Ade Edmonson is ... well.. there. I'm sure he was paid for showing up. Good for him.

On the side of the angels (to coin a phrase) is Robbie Coltrane. One of the weird things about the concept of this film is that Coltrane's "Pope Dave" is an archetypical innocent, but in order for the plot to advance he has to be more worldly. This results in the character swooping back and forth from oblivious naif to self-aware rebel, like his main tragic flaw is an inability to get his Paxil dosage timed. He does play an impressive guitar (or at least he's good at miming Jeff Beck, who is listed as Original Music by) and three cheers for not having a climactic "Hey Vatican, Let's Rock!" concert on the Piazza San Pietro.

Which brings me to another point. I always wonder about the amount of comedy that comes at the expense of Catholicism, and how much of it is deserved. The bishops and cardinals all have these groovy crucifix cell-phones (In 1991 you had to be majorly blinged to have a cell phone). I took a look to see if such things now exist. It seems that the only reason they don't is that the modification will make the phone too big.