How to Get Ahead in Advertising

1989

Action / Comedy / Fantasy

4
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 65% · 17 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 77% · 2.5K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.8/10 10 6916 6.9K

satire advertising nervous breakdown advertising executive advertising agency advertisement

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Plot summary

Pressure from his boss and a skin-cream client produces a talking boil on a British adman's neck.

Director

Bruce Robinson Photo
Bruce Robinson

Top cast

Sean Bean Photo
Sean Bean as Larry Frisk
Jacqueline Tong Photo
Jacqueline Tong as Penny Wheelstock
Richard E. Grant Photo
Richard E. Grant as Denis Dimbleby Bagley
Susan Wooldridge Photo
Susan Wooldridge as Monica
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
846.96 MB
1280*682
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles
23.976 fps
1 hr 30 min
Seeds 5
1.48 GB
1920*1024
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles
23.976 fps
1 hr 30 min
Seeds 7

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by greengene65 8 / 10

Advertising exec gets a conscious...leading to challenges on the job.

This brilliant attack on commodification and the misuse of language to cajole consumerism is a must see. I don't like to give anything away so suffice to say that Grant is excellent as the near-schizophrenic hero (anti-hero) who's copy writer's block leads to his confronting the hegemony he operates within. The film mocks the abuse of semiotics in the media; one particularly hilarious scene has Grant battling his fellow-commuters over a newspaper story designed, per Grant's character, Bagley, to lead readers to directed conclusions. In the exchange about a heroin arrest reported in the paper, police allege that a bag containing heroin "may" have also contained marijuana. Bagley burst out with, "It may have contained a f***ing pork pie!" Hilarity ensues, but not devoid of a moral lesson...you may find the rendering of William Blake's "Jerusalem" at the film's conclusion particularly ironically amusing.
Reviewed by michael-1151 6 / 10

Not exactly satire, not exactly farce

If you want nuance, you'll not find it here, subtlety, pah!!! No, it's laid on with a shovel as advertising executive Richard E Grant discovers advertising is more shallow than a paddling pool, and like said pool, if a toddler was unable to contain a lavatorial need, full of....well,you know what! The trouble is, although we see Grant having his breakdown, becoming obsessive and growing a boil which becomes his alter-ego, we do not see his journey, he's dubbed a success by everyone, but we do not see him succeed. We merely witness the repercussions of his desultory realisation that he's been part of the problem, rather than the solution.The idea of the talking boil is fun, but the scriptwriter/director didn't know whether to make it surreal, knockabout or farce, in the end sticking to what he perceives as satire. I'd have liked the themes to have been developed more - together with the two differing characters within the same body. We each see thousands of commercials on television, commercialisation is everywhere, referees and umpires have ads on their sleeves, I'm expecting the police to have sponsors' names on their trousers when they finally come to get me.This needed a little more subtlety, more comedy with the beautiful wife, who seemed discomforted by having sex with the brash alter-ego - that could have produced an amusing scene or three.It's much better that Robert Altman's unsuccessful parody of fashion, Pret-a-Porter, but uses a sledgehammer to lance a boil.
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