Quick! Someone get me some mind-floss so I can get the last chunk of this piece of drek out of my grey matter. This is the most mind-numbingly boring film I have ever seen. I not only wanted to walk out, I wanted to claw my eyeballs out. The only reason I stayed around was morbid curiosity; this just HAD to get better, I figured, it just HAD to go someplace sometime. But in that assumption I was painfully wrong.

It takes place in the early thirties in England amongst the idle rich in an old English estate; all the ladies with those 20s hairstyles and everyone with that look from the 20s, a decade that just screamed of wanting to die of decay and old age. Upstairs are the quality people, downstairs are their servants and never the twain shall meet. Now, this film is being advertised like it's some Agatha Cristy-Clue who done-it comdey caper, but the murder doesn't happen until an hour and 20 minutes in, the "comedy" is little more then the everyday amusing remarks you can hear from real people on the streets (except the real-life stuff is at least funny), and the who-done-it bit appears to be beside the piont.

Apparently this is a film about the whole Upstairs versus Downstairs way of English class living, where the downstairs types do all the work and the upstairs ones seem skilled only in aging. It has all the character-driven stuff and who's doing what, and gossiping that goes on with this sort of thing. And that's what most of this film is about; gossiping. The boring everyday life of a people that really don't know anything ABOUT life. The murder just seems to be a last-ditch reason to bring the film together. In fact, the inspector that comes walking in asking his questions is a fool who just takes names and leaves, never bothering to look for the clues he's too busy stepping over, and never solving the murder nor at that point do we CARE about solving it, we just want out of the theater! The murder ends of being solved by one of the servants but never revealed to the authorities, just left to lie there as everyone leaves.

Character-driven stories are one thing, but they still have to be entertaining with at least one character that looks like he's not an animatronic. Studies of segments of society are also one thing, but not when you've already gotten the point after the first 20 minutes and viewers want the whole thing to move on or at least just all go away. Agatha Cristie it is not, and as an art-film it stinks unless for people who like others to think they're smart by attending films they THINK intelligent people would go see... The intelligent people were probably in the next room watching paint peel.

I can't stress enough how really really bad this film is (it left me longing for Event Horizon and THAT was bad!), how I could feel my neurons trying not to die off from the tedium that Altman has slapped so carefully together, how I dearly wanted to reach for a remote and change the movie to something playing on the screen next door, or how much I want that part of my life back. Emergency Exits are made for films like this and I admit that I should have used one- I just figured that there just HAD to be something about to happen any second, even up to the point where the end credits thankfully began to roll. Two hours and twenty minutes of torture, but I DID walk out of there having learned one thing...

I now detest the English upper class.