Laurence Sterne's "unfilmable" 18th-century novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, shook literature to its foundations. It featured a narrator who hadn't yet been born, stories that wandered off to nowhere and even totally blank pages.
But director Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People) had a great idea. Rather than film the novel, he would think like Sterne. In a kind of post-postmodern spirit, his adaptation would simply reference itself as well as the novel.
After this initial idea, however, Winterbottom doesn't really employ anything new. He uses the same tales of egomaniacal actors and bizarre directorial flourishes that most movie-movies (Living in Oblivion, Bowfinger, Hollywood Ending) have already adopted. One sequence featuring a giant womb will remind some viewers of Spinal Tap.
And so Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story becomes Coogan's film. Playing himself playing Tristram Shandy, Coogan embodies a walking ego but without the work ethic or common sense to justify it. He continually lusts for attention from the director and attractive female underlings, while trying to stomp down his nearest competition, costar Rob Brydon. While the rest of the crew ponders the artistic merit of an expensive battle sequence, Coogan whines about the height of his shoes (they should elevate him above Rob).
This stuff is strictly Ben Stiller material, but genuinely hilarious sparks fly when Coogan and Brydon squabble onscreen. In one sequence, they swap Al Pacino impersonations. Coogan can barely stifle his giggles, and the fun is infectious.
Oddly, Winterbottom's interesting attempts at the film-of-the-novel actually pay off. Coogan makes a better Tristram than he does Coogan, and the scenes in which he plays his father witnessing his own birth can be very amusing.
The new Tristram is undeniably funny, albeit in intermittent chunks. Still, the connection between the novel, the film-within-a-film and the real-life egos never really coalesces; it doesn't shake any foundations.