I went on vacation by accident…

So after I got home from the OMG family reunion on Saturday (more on this anon), and took a nap, I tried to get myself caught up on my Netflix DVDs. Watched an episode of Waking the Dead (Life Sentence) and ended up freaking myself out. I was sitting there twitching over every noise my house was making and getting ready to check all my closets for creepy serial killers. Not sure why I got quite so creeped out, but my squick tolerance is pretty low, and sometimes I just get spooked.

As an antidote, I pulled out the other Netflix DVD sitting on top of my TV … and I’m not entirely sure I was in the right frame of mind to appreciate the wacked out, morning after some really bad drugs and A LOT of liquor madness that is Withnail and I. I was kinda like WOAH WTF the whole way through it, and alternately falling off the couch laughing, or wanting to crawl under something in an “oh the horror…” moment. I think I ended up appreciating it more when I watched the ‘making of’ featurette. I know it would improve upon multiple viewings. It was rather like John Waters decided to adapt a Jeeves and Wooster story.

And bonus… swooshy coats… and Jack’s awful green shirt … I kept thinking Torchwood did the costumes…with sets by the Harry Potter design team on acid.

You can hardly go wrong with Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, and Richard Griffiths.

Pulled up a couple reviews to see what those guys had to say. Ebert says this movie “conveys the experience of being drunk so well that the only way I could improve upon it would be to stand behind you and hammer your head with two-pound bags of frozen peas.” and some British wag say “Prepare to enter the arena of the unwell.”

Yeah. I can’t really add to that… except to say SEE IT. It’s an unforgettable experience. If hangovers could be packaged and sent through the mail… this DVD would include one. But it’s also deeply, embarrassingly, funny … and unexpectedly touching in spots where the Brits prove that they can do Shakespeare like nobody’s business.