Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This show is almost historical to me. I remember coming home from work one late summer day in 1999. I had dinner, went into the living room and sat down in front of the big-screen TV. The channel happened to be on HBO but I wasn't particularly interested in watching, I mainly wanted to nap. There was a guy on TV dressed kind of unusual doing a stand-up comedy routine. I had no idea who or what it was, but the guy did seem kind of cool. As a lark I turned up the sound and watched a little. At this point I completely forgot about my nap. I started laughing. He was hilarious. Then came a skit that made me laugh so hard that I found it hard to catch my breath. Then the humor came like rapid fire, one after the other, each more unbelievably hilarious than the previous. I was laughing so uncontrollably that I started to feel pain in my lungs and started to choke, I felt like I was going to hurl! Get this; I actually had to make the reluctant decision to turn off the TV because I was afraid I was going to suffocate! I couldn't breathe, my chest was throbbing in pain; and I'm in very good shape! I couldn't help thinking that this was the Monty Python death joke in real life! I'm actually hard to make laugh, but this guy is a phenomenon, a secret weapon, arguably the greatest comedian of all time (not to mention very intelligent and educated). After recovering I immediately looked up the next HBO airing of that show, and set up my VCR to record it. I'd never heard of Eddie Izzard prior to that day, but I immediately became a permanent and devoted fan!

As a break from long form narrative, I have been watching a lot of films of standup comics. It is one of the most puzzling things I have done recently. Nothing tells you more in a short time about someone than what they find funny. Part of that is the structure of the humor, the core of what I've been studying. But it is worth remarking that some component is what we want to believe is funny. Some of that is physical group dynamics; we join in groups in order to laugh. A related affiliation is incorporated into the humor -- race and class comedians exploit this. Sometimes you leave just feeling dirty afterwards by the association.I think Chris Rock brilliantly exploits this by alternately seducing us into joining a group and then allowing us to make fun of ourselves for doing so. Izzard works with a quite different sort of humor. I think I will characterize it as similar to Rock, but instead of joining a group, he tricks us into joining a narrative or reminding us of a narrative we already joined. Then instead of directly making fun of it or us, he takes it seriously to an extreme. This allows us to think we are laughing at him rather than ourselves, removing that barrier of ironic self-loathing. Underscoring this is his persona as a self-hating, ugly transvestite. Being a successful standup comic must be one of the hardest, most fragile things you can do. If you can do it and have the audience leave actually feeling better -- well, that is a gift.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

This video was my first exposure to Eddie Izzard. We had several friends over one night and for some reason or another had channel-surfed to HBO during the course of the evening. Someone by the name of "Eddie Izzard" was on.I tried not to laugh too loudly at the first few jokes. I didn't want to be held "responsible" for the rest of the group's enjoyment of something that was obviously killing me. After holding in my laughs for more than was healthful, I let go--as did the others of us(we were not stoned, by the way, nor talking of insurance and pensions...). We were asphyxiated after that. The story lines, the plot, the bizarre yet ingenious connections throughout the sketches are nothing short of brilliance. I have since been addicted to every Eddie-Izzard-piece-of-comedy I can get my hands on. His work is sheer genius. His comedy appears effortless. He seems more like that hysterically funny friend hanging out at your house and rambling on about this or that...It's convulsively funny. He gives you the impression that the joke is between you .. and himself, the only true aficionados of humor, after all. If you are disappointed in this video, you have no sense of the penultimate in humor--or humour, as they say in the UK.

Right, then, he's absolutely brilliant. But you must be intelligent and quick to understand his humor. He covers (attacks?) all sorts of topics, such as the first moon landing, Easter/Christmas, transvestitism, movies, and Herr Doktor Heimlich.For those of you are averse to swearing, this isn't for you. While some of us punctuate with commas and periods, he uses the f-word. Also, if you can't laugh at yourself, never watch this; you will feel the fool.Incidentally, I've watched his other stuff and even saw him perform live, and this is by far his best work. He simply shines.What might go so far as to say he is Glorious.