The film is, in its own unique way, an adaptation of “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,” a (widely considered) unfilmable book about a man unable to write his autobiography because of the countless tangents and side-stories he is always launching into. The point of the book is that a single man’s life cannot fit into the pages of a single book. To illustrate this point visually, the film regularly cuts back and forth between the actual story and scenes showing the film being made. This means that in one scene the British actor Steve Coogan is playing the character of Tristram Shandy and in the next, he’s playing himself talking about how well the filming is going.

This sounds both complicated and, worse, boring. The surprise, then, is how fun the film is. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, in particular, are hilarious and have a wonderful chemistry with each other that can't be faked. In addition to their parts within the story, they play vain and attention-hungry versions of themselves, battling each other for more screen time. Watching Steve Coogan complain about the height of his shoes; watching Rob Brydon lust after Gillian Anderson (the American brought in to help gain the film financing); or watching them both compare their Al Pacino impressions are all diversions to be sure. But they’re all hilarious and fascinating, proving the whole point of the film—to celebrate the diversions.

My greatest fear in writing this review is that I am making a funny, brilliant, honest film sound really uninteresting. The truth is, just like Tristram Shandy the man, “Tristram Shandy” the film cannot be summed up in mere words. Just do yourself a favor, and check out what will surely be known as one of the year’s best comedies.

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