Clockwise

Brian Stimpson is a headmaster who has turned punctuality into a moral position. The biggest day of his career has arrived: he is to chair the headmasters' conference and give the address. Then he boards the wrong train. The rest of the film is a man breaking every one of his own principles in order to get there on time. Christopher Morahan directs from a screenplay by Michael Frayn. John Cleese plays Stimpson. Frayn is not an incidental credit. The man who wrote Noises Off for the stage builds comedy the same way here: a small fault, a mechanical chain, and every solution manufacturing the next problem. Cleese's man is not Basil Fawlty but a relative of his. The difference is that Stimpson is not angry, he is determined. He does not break the system. The system breaks around him. Cleese complained during production about the sheer volume of text he had to learn; Frayn's dialogue was written to the word and left no room to improvise. It did well in Britain, got only a limited American release, and has settled over the years into the cult shelf of British comedy. Who it is for: anyone who likes English comedies of escalating loss of control, and Cleese playing tight rather than loud. Who it is not for: the humour rests on a single idea. If that idea has not landed within half an hour, the rest will wear you down.