It seems “The Trip”, one of my favourite films of this and last year, has many fathers. I mentioned it owes a lot to Kerry Reichardt’s “Old Joy”, and it merges this with the hilarious nonsense that is “A Cock and Bull Story”. I have no idea whether this Michael Winterbottom film has anything to do with its literary source (by Laurence Sterne). Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are – just as in “The Trip” – very convincingly playing versions of themselves, actors on the set of a too-low budget production of “Tristram Shandy”. I can’t really say what it is about, there is the regular chaos of any film production, the catastrophes of useless battle scenes, there is Agent Scully and Stephen Fry for decoration at points, and there is the little boy who gets his little boy caught in a falling window frame. It is good fun, and it has the despair of vain actors fighting for their reputation and career and against their age that can also be found in “The Trip” and that makes both films deeper and sadder than they could have been. Michael Winterbottom cannot make uninteresting movies, quod erat demonstrandum.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/tristram_shandy_a_cock_and_bull_story/
thomas4cinema 