Word: alec
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...quickly identifiable as Alec Guinness, whose last really funny movie was The Horse's Mouth in 1959. Though billed as comedy, Hopeless flatly reestablishes that Sir Alec has taken leave of his sense of humor...
However, Hopeless rallies when Connors suddenly squawks: "I want a dame!" Soon Sir Alec is off to the local bawdyhouse. His milksop face a mask of maniacal innocence, he joins the Madam (Mady Rahl) on a couch so voluptuous that his feet don't quite reach the floor. Whereupon, he proceeds to terrify the poor jade with his doubletalking request for the services of a young lady who can entertain a couple of eccentric friends in total silence. Such pimping could hardly be improved upon, which shows just how far an unpleasant comedy has to go to find...
...Surprises. Heath's task was made no easier by the genuine outpouring of warmth that greeted his predecessor, Sir Alec Douglas-Home. And the freshly minted Conservative statement of aims was something less than the dynamic manifesto the Tory faithful had hoped for. Its conventional mix of incentives for private enterprise and tolerance for the Welfare State brought no surprises...
...hero of the book is named Alec Barr. Like the author, he was born poor in North Carolina, went to college at Chapel Hill, hired on as a general reporter for the Washington Daily News, soon started a syndicated column, and in recent years made big money and a big name with a brace of bestsellers about Africa in transformation. The story of the hero's public life is superficial but exciting; the details of his private life are clinical and, with the hero-author parallel continually implied, embarrassing. As for the women in his life, Ruark compares them...
Rotten to the Core. Halfway through this eccentric British comedy about a pack of bumbling criminals, moviegoers whose memories reach back a decade or so are apt to grow nostalgic and inquire rhetorically: Guinness, anyone? Rotten invites comparison to Sir Alec's memorable extralegal capers in The Man in the White Suit and The Lavender Hill Mob, but its low-jinx omits such essentials as wit, slyness and style...