Mark Gatiss’ choice: Bullseye!

Chosen by The League of Gentlemen’s Mark Gatiss, last Friday’s film was Bullseye! (1990).
It turned out to be something of an eye-opener for all involved.
Directed by the late Michael Winner – and starring no-lesser talents than Sirs Roger Moore and Michael Caine – it should’ve been good.
It mostly wasn’t.
Moore and Caine play dual roles – a pair of small-time conmen (Caine spends the first ten minutes with a blob of putty on the end of his nose, so that he can properly lose himself in the part), and a pair of conniving nuclear physicists who believe they have invented a limitless supply of energy and want to make billions off the back of it – by selling it to the highest bidder. (Rather than simply giving it to the British, like they obviously should. The bastards.)
Some wigs and a nose job later, the conmen use their resemblance to the scientists to get access to their safe deposit boxes and steal the formula – but, in so doing, they become embroiled into a shady world of spies, international intrigue, clanging one-liners, and unnecessary cameo appearances.
Halfway through the film – which is frantic to the point of being horribly confusing – the action moves to a train for some reason – and, from there, to a stately home in Scotland, which gives both sets of Moore and Caine the chance to dress up in kilts and generally dick about amidst some stock footage of an early-’80s Highland Games.
The film is ultimately saved by a running gag involving a couple of American tourists who are wandering around the stately home at the end of the film – wearing the traditional plaid/cameras combo beloved of their kind in films of this type. Due to the pratfalling of our heroes, the wife is repeatedly injured (she is thrown into a river twice, and, later, has a caber tossed at her head), only for her husband to be so pleased with this turn of events, that he continually pleads with her assailants: “Buddy, at least let me buy you a drink..?” (One wonders if this might be Mr. Winner’s contribution to the script?)
The film is also notable for the baffling appearance of John Cleese turning up on a beach at the end – credited as ‘the man that looks like John Cleese’ – and the fact that this is the only time in cinema history that you’ll ever see Caine and Moore wearing donkey jackets.
The Radio Times Guide to Films’ review of Bullseye! states that it is an ‘appallingly unfunny comedy and a career low for all concerned.’ Which just feels a bit like nitpicking, really.

