Peter Sellers stars as Sir Guy Grand, a fabulously wealthy eccentric who gets to do anything and everything he wants to by liberally greasing the palms of those less fortunate (and wealthy) than himself. Lacking an heir, he adopts a homeless derelict (Ringo Starr) who becomes Youngman Grand and joins him in a series of wild and wacky misadventures. In his apparently never ending quest to prove that everyone has their price, Sir Guy and his newly adopted heir are joined by a host of other notables in cameo roles including Richard Attenborough, John Cleese, Laurence Harvey, Christopher Lee, Roman Polanski, Yul Brynner and Raquel Welch. The movie is based on a book by Terry Southern (who wrote the screenplay for another Peter Sellers classic - "Dr. Strangelove") with Monty Python alumni Graham Chapman and John Cleese lending a hand in the screenplay. This is a movie that has everything: great writers, great actors, well-known comtemporary celebrities and a rapid-fire barrage of parodies and spoofs of almost everything we hold dear, including greed, gluttony, racism and incompetency. If this movie does not make you laugh out loud (frequently) you should consider getting treatment for a severe case of humor deficiency.

This comedy passed me by when it was released in 1969. I had seen CASINO ROYALE and WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT? and automatically in my subconscious somehow roped this movie in with those two turkeys. I had always avoided it on purpose whenever the movie turned up on TV. The only reason I gave it a go this time was the fact that comedian Paul Merton gave it such a wonderful review on his recent "Paul Merton's Perfect Night In" show on BBC2. I am pleased I finally gave it a go, I actually laughed out loud on a number of occasions and didn't want it to end. I absolutely recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys the 1960's sub-culture. Peter Sellers plays an eccentric millionaire who adopts Ringo Starr, whom he fell in love with, but only in a 'paternal way'. Together they embark on a series of bizarre and degrading tests around London to illustrate the depths to which mankind will sink in pursuit of money: any man has his price and will do literally anything if the price is right. The movie makes less than subtle attacks on the establishment, including the annual Oxford-Cambridge boat race, that very British symbol of earnest endeavour and sportsmanship which is turned into a sea battle when referee Richard Attenborough accepts a bribe. The richest prize in sport, the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship, incites a riot when both protagonists actually kiss instead of punching the hell out of each other. The World Champ is played by that great character Nosher Powell, a former heavyweight boxer of the 50's. His challenger is none other than former European Champion Dick Richardson, a real tough guy who fought Ezzard Charles and Ingemar Johansson. This must have been an 'in-joke' by the film's director, having these two real-life hard cases acting as 'puffs'. "The Magic Christian" was a great surprise to me and I strongly recommend it.

After more than 40 years, The Magic Christian still entertains. Its style is very much of the Sixties, but its profoundly cynical message---that anything can be bought, that everyone has his price---is, if anything, more relevant now than in 1969 when the film was released. The star, of course, is Peter Sellers as the obscenely wealthy Sir Guy Grand, who manages to seem almost childlike as he spreads his bounty of cynicism throughout London.

This is not a great film, or even necessarily a good one, but even second- or third-rate Peter Sellers may be preferable to a lot of first-rate work by others. The childless Sir Guy decides one morning to acquire an heir, so he goes to the park and picks up a homeless man played by Ringo Starr, and adopts him as his son, Youngman Grand. (Ringo actually doesn't have much to do in this film except react to Sellers.) Sir Guy then enlists Youngman in escapades that, in his hands, skewer the stuffed shirts of upper-class London society and turn the most solemn occasions into a carnival of absurdist nihilism. The most extreme comes at the end of the film, where he scatters money into a huge vat of blood, urine and excrement, and then watches as bowler-hatted City of London types wade into it for the money. This scene doesn't quite work. There is an extended sequence aboard a bogus cruise ship called The Magic Christian that tends to try one's patience because it degenerates into a very Sixties psychedelic montage. One moment from this sequence, however, is worth the whole thing: Raquel Welch as the Priestess of the Whip. Dressed as a dominatrix, she never looked more luscious or voluptuous. Film aficionados will appreciate the many old-line British actors who contributed supporting or cameo roles (Spike Milligan, Lawrence Harvey, Richard Attenborough, John Le Mesurier, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Christopher Lee, and others less well known outside the UK) as well as glimpses of younger now-famous faces, especially John Cleese in a hysterically funny scene at Sotheby's. Cleese plays the terminally smarmy, unctuous, patronizing curator Mr. Dougdale, whose supercilious mien is punctured beyond repair by Sir Guy in a scene involving the defacing of a priceless painting. There is a Monty Python skit that looks like it was directly inspired by this scene. This film was shot at about the time of the first season of Monty Python's Flying Circus, and what with the appearance in the film of at least two Pythons that I could identify, there are definitely echoes of Python in it. The other Python was (an uncredited) Graham Chapman as the leader of the Oxford team during the famous Oxford-Cambridge boat race. Watch also for an uncredited Yul Brynner playing a female impersonator who does a sexy torch song. Alert listeners---especially lovers of the classic 1950s BBC radio comedy program the Goon Show---will also notice that Sellers does almost all of the off-screen voices and several voices of characters seen only in long shot, reminiscent of the films of Orson Welles; so if you suddenly think you hear Henry Crun or Major Bloodnok off-screen, it's not your imagination.

All in all, a solid five or six stars out of ten.