cosmorados Denis Bagley is a hot-shot advertiser who can do no wrong. he knows his client as well as he knows his own face, he can tell anybody who stars at the goggle box what to do, what to think and what to buy? His words are weapons of the consumer age and he will sell anything to anyone. Money is his to have and the general public buys what he tells them, giving him the power of a God. However, as he strikes a bit of a problem over pimple cream he starts to lose his edge, he is cnfronted by the realisation that maybe he is not the person he thinks he is, or wants to be, as he listens to a conversation on a train over a story written by the other people who tell everyone what to do, the popular press, he bursts the bubble of those discussing the story by pointing out that a bag of cannabis that could have contained cocaine, could also have contained a pork pie."It's the use of the word "Could"" Denis exclaims, as he realises that perhaps, the power that he has is being misused. As he decides to rid himself of advertising and turn a new leaf. However as he starts to develop a painful boil on his neck he starts to have anxiety pains over this turn of direction, resulting in his boil growing a face and speaking to him.What happens from this point is a tour-de-force satire on the modern world that was arguably twenty years before its time as the commercial markets freedom has led to our current crop of problems, rather than to their solutions. Richard E Grent is amazing as the Ad Exec with an attack of conscience that takes on alarming results, with able support from Rachel Ward and Richard Wilson. The direction is good, but it is the razor sharp script that gets all the plaudits by challenging our perception of the real world as much as the Matrix, but with the certain knowledge that the questions raised in this film, we can address as the credits come up.Know thyself.

Raegan Butcher This movie is a riot. Richard E Grant gives an amazingly intense performance. His entire role seems to consist of nothing but brilliantly scabrous monologues. His acerbic take on everything around him starts at a fever pitch and then giddily topples over into outright inspired lunacy. See this film if for no other reason than to get a glimpse of him naked save for a kitchen apron, gleefully stuffing raw chickens down the toilet drain and all the while explaining, " Everything I do makes sense, everything i do has a reason!"I prefer this style of over the top attack much more than the drier and more subtle (!) mode employed by both writer-director Bruce Robinson and Richard E. Grant in their first collaboration, WITHNAIL & I.The heights of comic outlandishness achieved in HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING is something that is rarely achieved by any film and it is doubly commendable that everything done here ( no matter how tastelessly crazy) still never stoops to the childishly vulgar levels that most American comedies regularly splash about in like mental asylum inmates happily playing with their own feces. Yes, despite everything this film attempts ( and achieves) it still retains a sense of sophistication that shows what thuddingly awful garbage ( i am looking directly at you AUSTIN POWERS, SCARY MOVIE, etc, etc) is usually regarded as the height of comedy.

Ricky Roma In Withnail & I, Bruce Robinson made one of the funniest films there is. Therefore it's always going to be hard for anything else he's made to equal his debut. However, in How to Get Ahead in Advertising he comes mighty close.The reason why Robinson's second film fails to match Withnail & I is because at times it becomes too preachy. There are some great speeches in the film; some wonderful digs at consumerism, but occasionally it descends into uninteresting ranting. Yeah consumerism can turn us into unthinking automatons, and yeah big business is greedy, but you don't really need to point it out so blatantly. We already know this. The film works much better when illustrates the BS or when it jabs at it. It doesn't need to get on its soapbox.One of my favourite bits in the film is when Bagley (Richard E. Grant) – a cocky advertising executive who suddenly loses his magic touch when he has to sell boil cream – is listening to a bunch of idiots talking about a newspaper article. As a person who makes a living out of lying, he's appalled that they believe what the press tells them. They then begin to argue (there's a great bit when an Irish priest insists that a woman in a vice den had peanut butter smeared across her tits; it was in the paper so it must be true) and the conversation quickly turns to the boil cream that Bagley has become obsessed with. "They're incurable, all of them. I know that and so does everybody else. Until they get one. Then the rules suddenly change." And then he has a dig at the priest. "They want to believe something works. He knows that, which is why he gets a good look-in with the dying." It's a great scene; it's funny as hell and it also has a good point to make: people consume less out of desire and more out of a desperate sort of hope, or even fear; they hope this product or that product will fill the hole in their lives. They hope it will be the answer to all their problems. And thankfully this scene refrains from the preaching that affects the latter stages. Instead it goes right for the jugular.But my favourite scene of all is the one with the psychiatrist – Bagley has quit his job and developed a hideous boil of his own, one that talks to him and one that has a face. He's talking to the quack with a big bandage on his shoulder. He rants for a while about the way advertisers have ruined television, and then all of a sudden, after silence, the boil speaks. The way it's presented in the film, the boil (at first) has a separate voice to Bagley's. He's not portrayed as Gollum with a satanic pimple; he's not talking to himself. But at the same time you're never really sure whether you're seeing things from Bagley's perspective. He's gone totally crazy, so he may very well be the one saying all this crap. Plus the boil only speaks when Bagley's not looking the other person in the face. But what I love about the scene is the filth the boil speaks and Grant's reactions. His hysteria is hilarious (there's another magnificent bit of hysteria in the film – when the boil first 'speaks', Bagley is so shocked that he runs to the kitchen, shaking and spazzing like he's got St Vitus' dance. Grant is amazing at working himself up into a lather). And then the boil asks Bagley to tell the shrink about his grandfather. "My grandfather was caught molesting a wallaby in a private zoo in 1919." "A wallaby?" "It may have been a kangaroo. I'm not sure." "You mean sexually?" "I suppose so. He had his hand in its pouch." I haven't heard dialogue that funny in a long time.I also love the scene when Bagley is admitted to hospital to have the boil lanced. By now he's completely raving. He's going on and on about the evils of consumerism. So then the boil says, "You commies don't half talk a lot of s***." Magnificent! It's the sort of argument a Daily Mail reader would give. Criticise capitalism and you must be a goddamned Red. However, I can see where the boil is coming from. There are certainly times when Robinson is too militant. Like I said before, he really doesn't need to stand so high on his soapbox. But at the same time the film makes some excellent points. It's just that the film works better when it does it through comedy rather than rhetoric.Another great scene, one that takes a poke at society's hypocrisy, is when Bagley argues with a feminist who thinks men should bleed. "And I think you're a vegan who eats meat in secret. You see, she doesn't deny it. She's a vegan who eats meat in secret." "I do not eat meat!" "But you'll eat fish, you'll eat fish until the cows come home." "Fish is allowed!" Of course, this enrages Bagley.But although hypocritical lefties get a kicking too, the film, early on, raises an interesting point. If you're anti-consumerism, how do you spread your message without advertising? It's a bit of a kick in the teeth, that.However, Robinson is smart enough to know that consumerism is here to stay. The film doesn't end with any hope. All we can look forward to is more advertising, more spending and more products. The world is one magnificent shop, indeed.

Pepper Anne This film is literally about "How to Get A HEAD in Advertising." Once a vigorous advertising agent in his field, able to sell anything to anyone, Denis Dimbleby Bagley (Richard E. Grant) has suddenly found himself working himself to death trying to come up with a sales pitch for pimple cream. His obsession with trying to conquer those bloody boils suddenly leads to an unexpected epiphany in which Denis, sick of how everything has become so relentlessly commercialized and every single value of life turned into a money making venture, decides to give up the advertising trade and wage a war on the commercialization of life. But, if there's one thing a revolutionary cannot do freely, it's stand in the way of profiteering. Denis faces a nemises, the one who wants him to keep on ruthlessly selling (and lying) to the world and stomp out the idealistic and possibly costly ambitions of the born again Denis Bagely. But it is no ordinary nemesis. It is a boil that grows on the his neck, an alter-ego that grew out of Denis's inability to sell everything (i.e. the pimple cream) and his newfound war against advertising. This boil comes to gain it's own personality, it's own voice, and even it's own appearance (it looks exactly like Denis). Everyone thinks that Denis is insane with his talks of a muttering boil on his neck which he engages in conversation with. The boil starts to grow a life of it's own, and even a head of it's own, seeking to stifle Denis before his epiphanies are carried to far, and people start thinking for themselves and so forth.It is certainly an off-the-wall dark comedy, but an absolutely hilarious one with a valid point about the incessant commercialization about nearly every aspect of life, and one person who recognizes what a load of bullocks it is and tries to rid himself of it as much as he can. The ending makes for a cool finale as boil head Denis is yapping like a proud general riding his horse around unconquered territory about the possibility of amassing the earth and selling the world bit like bit. He ideas so dangerous, yet he is unstoppable and out of control. It is one hilarious movie and certainly an inventive story.