I’ve been watching some bad movies lately. But Withnail and I is different.

While I was watching it at first, I wasn’t laughing. I wondered for the first half-hour, how can this be on Channel 4’s 50 Greatest Comedy Films List? What I wasn’t counting on was that the movie was building an onion from the inside out. It piled on layer after layer of absurdity. It needed time to build.

And it did. I laughed at the poacher and Uncle Monty. Both Withnail and I were well acted, but Richard Griffiths stole the movie with Uncle Monty. I’m really coming to appreciate his acting more and more—Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter movies is hardly all he can do.

I’ll be watching this again. Now, GET IN THE VAN!