The Dog's Bollocks*

"Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story," directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Steve Coogan, is droll, clever, and bloody British. This film within a film attempts to tell the story of "Tristram Shandy," a messy, large book that defies adaptation. We learn more about the book from the actors breaking out of character and telling us point blank than from the recreations. The filming goes wonderfully awry with the impossibility of transferring the book to film. However, this is precisely the book's message: life is so full and unpredictable that it is impossible to rein it in and confine it to a nice tidy package. So very clever.
*For you non-Anglophiles, "the dog's bollocks" is a Britishism to mean "excellent" or "first-rate," similar to the meaning of "the bee's knees."