With recent events, in a country where the rich steal from the poor and then expect the poor to bail them out, it all seems a terrifying, crazy, hopeless mess. We could all use some escapism. (And, eventually, a plot of land on which to grow vegetables and process our own graywater as we wait with our guns in our laps for nightfall, when the raid-gangs come. But that’s not what Questionable Taste Theatre is about!)

This week’s Questionable Taste Theatre honors a movie in which a terrifying, crazy, hopeless mess is awesomely, wondrously, and hilariously fixed: Cold Comfort Farm.

Nutshell: There’s a huge mess. Then Flora Poste shows up.

“Jane Austen and I have so much in common – neither of us can endure mess.”

Cold Comfort Farm is based on the book by Stella Gibbons, which is one of the most amazing satires ever written; it manages to skewer melodrama, rural English drama, writers, and its own heroine.

Casting for this movie most have been fraught, since the entire story rests on the ability of all of its actors to be absolutely wonderful at being absolutely awful. Luckily, when it came time to cast it, they basically wrote a letter to England and said, “Send only your best!”

AND THEY DID.

Kate Beckinsale (in the only role of hers I ever liked) is Flora Poste, the normal, proper English girl of liberal ideas and conservative salary, who goes to live with distant relatives on a farm in Sussex, to the face-cupping dismay of Joanna Lumley.

Those relatives include Eileen Atkins, Ian McKellen, Miriam Margolyes, Rufus Sewell, Sheila Burrell, plus lovestruck author Stephen Fry and milquetoast gentry Rupert Penry-Jones. They all have character names, of course, but really, they all march around relishing their parts so much it seems a shame to call this anything other than Amazing British Actor Camp. I mean, you know a movie’s good when Eileen Atkins gets this as her promotional still:

The caption says, “Come see our movie! We have the crazy chick!”

So, Kate Beckinsale shows up and:

- Gets the hippie chick to marry the dim-bulb gentry;
- Convinces Ian McKellen to leave town in “one o’them Ford vans” and preach his “There’s no butter in hell” routine across the world.
- Makes sure Reuben, the only normal person on the farm, actually gets control of the farm.
- Gets Stephen Fry kicked out of a party. Though, to be fair, who hasn’t wanted to throw Stephen Fry out of a party? (It’s because he’s too funny! TOO FUNNY.)
- Tries to act in the same frame as Eileen Atkins, which – good luck, chickie.
- Gets married to some guy she likes, in the world’s least-stressful romance subplot ever. It’s literally: she likes him, he likes her, at the end they get married. BEST EVER.

There’s not a single moment of this movie I dislike. The movie does take a different tack in the book; the book gently hates everyone including Flora, while the movie gently loves them all instead. However, it’s impossible to hate most of those actors, so it’s just as well they didn’t try to make us. (Kate is arguable; I tracked her career once and it didn’t hold up very well.)

It’s just amazing how much everyone is enjoying themselves. Fun fact: production was rushed, since it was initially a TV release, and so they often had to do one or two setups of a scene and then move on. That means that sometimes, when someone’s about to crack up, you can see it because they didn’t have enough footage to edit it out:

Dude can hardly hold it together. I don’t blame him, since he’s about five minutes away from tossing his head back and saying, “I mun go, Mother! Tis what I was always made for,” as Eileen Atkins drags at his arm like a sack of hooves.

The movie was made from a smart book and adapted smartly, and so much of the letter of the book remains in the arch dialogue, usually juxtaposed with a truly filthy Awesome British Actor Camp close-up. (I’m always so thrilled to see any of them in movies where they get to be clean all the time.)

The best part of the dialogue is that out of context it makes so little sense you could adapt it to almost any occasion. One I have used at least a dozen times:

Judith Starkadder: I’m a dead woman!
Earl P. Neck: [aside] I’d take her too, but she’s gloomy.

(Just the gloomy part. And, uh, use with caution, since people who give you those kinds of theatrics in the first place are probably not brimming with self-awareness. I’m sure you can see where this is going.)

(Totally worth it, though.)

However, despite the satirical bent, this movie is one of my most heartwarming movies ever, because there is NO STRESS INVOLVED. Someone comes into a messy situation and fixes everything. End of movie. Everything’s tidy and neat and there’s a lot of happy people smiling.

Except Ian McKellen! Guerrilla photo of Ian McKellen making lemonface!

HAHAHA, I love this movie.

Look at that picture and tell me that it wasn’t like Awesome British Actor Camp on that set every day. “Scowl, kids! No, no, SCOWLER! Ian, pop your eyeballs right out of your head. Good!”

Bonus: I finally found a trailer for this movie, which, if you looked only on YouTube, you would think had NEVER EXISTED.