Acensbart
Excellent but underrated film
Mandeep Tyson
The acting in this movie is really good.
Juana
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
bambybyte
"The Young Ones" was a British cult comedy that broke out from 82 to 84, and was a sort of cathodic counterpart of the raging and inventive intensity of punk in music. Their creators (Lise Mayer, Rik Mayall and Ben Elton) came from the extraordinary experience (an alternative comedy den wherein punks, students, stand-up Marxist comediennes and comedians and absolutely unclassified entities of London cabaret used to gather and socialize). They intended to cross the slapstick (that form of physical comedy that experiments with the possibilities of a poetics of violence, cruelty and catastrophe in scene; a form that tends to be minorized in comparison to other kinds of comedy due its association with unproductive, asocial excess) with punk. The result was this surreal, abrasive-convulsive, incredible series, regarded by many as an update of "La Bóheme" in Thatcher's years, starred by revulsive and caustic characters, especially designed by their authors to deliberately displease: four students living together in a house that's constantly falling apart (in every episode, scenarios are literally dismantled with utmost pleasure by their own characters, that smugly come and go through the fourth wall as it was a silk curtain). We got Rick, a camp and hypocritical anarchist poet, fascinated with the Baader-Meinhof and Cliff Richard in equal parts, whose embodiment of anxiety -some says that he reflected someway the fear of inauthenticity that haunted part of the '80 British left- appeals and amplify John Lydon's axiomatic mantra: "anger is an energy". We got Vyvyan, a sadistic, gory punk devoted to unravel all the applied varieties of the verb "destroy", that's pure unpredictable physicality in action. We got Neil, a melancholic, bittersweet acid-rocker hippie, spiritual reject from the generation of love waking from the dream of flowers to enter in '70/'80 Britain nightmare. We got Mike, a dandyesque '80 Casanova obsessed with -love-challenges (and subsequently, blessed with - love- failures) and enigmatic non-sequiturs. And of course, we got the Balowski landlord family, all of them, starred by the amazing, always strange Alexei Sayle (demarcating the disruptive moment of the series when the sitcom narrative and aesthetic register would leave place to the emergence of a sudden and brief stand-up universe).Neither of their twelve episodes has some deal of structure of any kind, every known trope was subverted and then, re-subverted again, the narrative could change at every moment, swerving from slapstick to claymation, to unusual stand-up and music live numbers of amazing bands playing in the set such as The Damned, Motörhead, Madness, Rip Rig & Panic or Dexys Midnight Runners. Summarizing, this series is ardently recommended by someone who, at the first time of watching the first episode, felt the very same feverish struck of agitation and anxious fascination that he felt while listening Buzzcocks' "Love Bites" or Damned's "Damned Damned Damned". Beauty would be convulsive or won't be. Long live punk, long live slapstick!
bruce99
My favorite thing to do with the Young Ones happened in a shop in Greenwich Village in the early 90's. I was in Meyers of Keswick, a British grocery in the Village with a young female coworker who trod down there with me in hopes of purchasing Christmas crackers and some English candy for the parties we were going to. We were in line waiting, and I noticed an actual Kendall Mintcake on the counter, picked it up, and screwed my face up to try to look like Ben Elton and said, "Hi," like I was Mr. Kendall Mintcake. My coworker stared blankly and I frustratedly tried to explain who The Young Ones were, Bambi, The Balowski Family, Monk deWally deHonk, Mr. Liberal,etc. to no avail. A cockney bloke standing next to us finally exploded and shouted, "Its Only The Greatest show Ever, Mate!!!" I asked him if he wanted to see how many pressups I could do. His girlfriend screamed at me that she was not being aggressive and we cracked in up in front of a few astonished bystanders.
FRANK GIBBARD
Dear fellow fans, I read most of the wholly positive reviews here ending in the last - I think exceptional in its negative tone - amazingly critical one. This must not be the last word I thought not if I could help it with 5 minutes work. That last reviewer evidently had a humour by-pass oh well nothing is more subjective than humour. Well this is one of my favourite comedies ever on TV, nothing quite matches it for the range of odd regular characters, it is sooo different than all other pretenders for the wacky surreal crown it proudly wears in the realm of enlight-entertainment. I tip my hat to it for the towering achievement the originality the anarchic wit all the stuff others have enumerated here. The best of the BBC the best of British immodestly the best of my country men and women actors & writers the best of bad taste - who can forget a bailed out Buddy Holly hanging in the cellar, I never will. Thanks to all concerned for all the fun to single one ascendant talent in particular the genius of idiocy Mr Mayal yours laughingly Frank.
Johann
Ah yes, The Young Ones. This is a quintessential British 80's comedy series. As much as I enjoyed Monty Python (as a kid I was a total Python freak), the Young Ones really put me over the edge. I think that it was that The Young Ones was basically a sit-com with some elements of a variety show thrown in (according to the IMDb it was so they could get a bigger budget for the show).The premise is extremely simple; four college students live in squaller in North London. The roommates are Rik, the people's poet who no one else likes, Vyvvian, the punker medical student, Mike the cool person, and Neil the depressed hippie. The foursome go around being all in all bastards to each other and have the occasional run in with their landlord (Alexi Sayle) who is constantly trying to bilk the four for every penny he can get out of them.All of this is punctuated by explosions, filth and things that are very boring. Vyvvian's hamster is also pretty amusing.
