Wilt

Griff Rhys Jones may not be everybody's idea of the hero of Tom Sharpe's delightfully black-humoured novel, but despite pedestrian direction, he does pull off the difficult task of sustaining interest and creulity throughout the accelerating absurdity (intentional and otherwise) of this bleak tale of misunderstandings. Wilt is a Liberal Studies lecturer at a Cambridge 'tec whose day-release students - leather-clad butcher's apprentices and the like - spend their time disputing the negligibility of his penis and fucking- rate. Wilt has no drive, but his socially aspirant, ball-breaking wife Eva (Steadman) has. Of the many incompetents around, Detective Inspectot Flint (Smith, wasted) takes the wooden spoon. After various country house shenanigans involving predatory moves made towards Eva by over-attentice 'friend' Sally (Quick), which end in a prolonged scene with Wilt humiliatingly strapped to a lifesize female doll, he and Flint finally clash. Wilt has disposed of the doll in concrete, his wife has disappeared, and Flint can add two and two and get the wrong answer. It all adds up to little more than a poorly paced, sporadically amusing farce which never finds a visual equivalent for Sharpe's wickedly acute social observations.