Anderson's dark satire on politics within a hospital (perhaps after the apocalypse) falls slightly flat only for those familiar with the 2 exceptional films that this one is ostensibly a sequel to. The humor here is even more extreme and grotesque than in "O Lucky Man" -- at one point the hero's head is cut off and placed on a substitute body. Hamill is amusing as a news technician too stoned to save MacDowell, or even himself, from the lunacy. Unfortunately, the script relies on "joke jokes" and has too little of an emotional center (MacDowell's character is taken out of the center of things here for some reason, perhaps budgetary). Nice photography. Fans of sadistic humor should get a great kick out of it, but "O Lucky Man" and "If....." are in every way superior.
Review of Britannia Hospital
