Les Patterson Saves the World (1987)

Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely brilliant

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The scene in the revolving restaurant of the Sydney Tower comes a full ten years after The Goodies did it in the "Alternative Roots" episode (1977). Graeme Tim and Bill (in their ancestral guises of Celtic Kilty, County Cutie and Kinda Kinky) have been kidnapped by an unscrupulous tour leader who is taking them on a whirlwind tourist tour of London. He forces them up to the revolving restaurant of the Post Office tower (the same one that Twinkle the giant kitten famously toppled). The restaurant spins faster and faster until all the diners are stuck to the windows via centrifugal force. This scene is of course considerably shorter and less expensive than the one set in the Sydney Tower in Les Patterson Saves the World, but no doubt both sequences derive from a universal and visceral mistrust of revolving restaurants.

I don't know what the problem is with some of IMDb's viewers. Maybe their sense of humor is atrophied, or maybe they're just a bunch of prisses. "Les Patterson" is one of my all-time favorite comedies, and the title character, played by the comic genius Barry Humphries, is earthy, lusty, memorable, and larger than life -- laughing-out-loud funny and raunchy but also endearing and in a certain way almost inspiring, with elements of Rabelais, Falstaff, and R. Crumb. (I'm told, unaccountably, that Humphries himself is none too proud of this film today; if that's the case, I'm mystified. Maybe he hasn't seen it in a while.) Try this movie for around 15 minutes; if that doesn't convince you, well, switch it off and go watch a sitcom.

Perhaps not our finest export, but definitely an 80s export, and ranking just ahead of Beavis and Butthead do America as my favorite dirty, gross-out movie of all time. This film is a rare little gem for all Patterson/Humphries fans, a must-have in the video cabinet of any collector. Humphries, true to his style, plays Australian diplomat and head of the Australian Cheese Board Sir Leslie Colin Patterson as well as the inimitable Dame Edna Everage, British Megastar. Involved is a plot to assassinate Sir Les, unleash a grotesque social disease with an even more grotesque name on the West by a Russian agent, and a coup in a financially and strategically important Middle Eastern country. Add Joan Rivers as the US President and you have the makings of a cult classic. But you need to be in the right mood! (Remember, Valium isn't a drug, it's a food, in tablet form!) I enjoyed the locations, filmed on location in Morocco and New York, giving the film an international feel even if it wasn't appreciated overseas. I guess you need to know Sir Les to appreciate this film, and likewise you have to like Sir Les to like it too.

Arguably the most disgusting thing to come out of Australia since Vegemite... Predictably distasteful comedy with Barry Humphries in a dual role as boozy Australian diplomat Les Patterson and undercover agent Dame Edna! So many bodily function gags that even the Farrelly brothers would have been sick, and several gross-out moments, especially the effects of the horrible H.E.L.P. virus. Only for fans of extreme toilet humor. Oh, and that´s the "NeverEnding Story II", NOT the "Mad Max" George Miller, who directed... *½