The Odd Job

1978

Comedy

Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 12%
IMDb Rating 5.9/10 10 414 414

Director

Peter Medak Photo
Peter Medak

Top cast

Diana Quick Photo
Diana Quick as Fiona Harris
Richard O'Brien Photo
Richard O'Brien as Batch
David Hatton Photo
David Hatton as Old Man
Michael Elphick Photo
Michael Elphick as Raymonde

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by 5 / 10

And now for something completely dipfferent,almost

I remember see this film at our local Odeon on its general release. Then it disappeared from view.To a certain extent you can see why,although it has its funny moments the film is not consistently funny.The story,as mentioned elsewhere,has been used on previous films.It is interesting to see David Jason in the role of the potential assassin. Graham Chapman is unconvincing.The film becomes more frenetic and less funny towards the end.
Reviewed by 7 / 10

Like Chapman then check it out. Don't like/know Chapman, move on.

This movie stars Monty Python's Graham Chapman and apparently hasn't been seen by many people considering there are less than 10 votes on it. I bought the video for $5 at a flea market since I'm a Python fan, figured I'd check it out. It's ok. Nothing special..kind of a one-joke premise...hire a guy to kill you, decide you don't want him to...then the guy won't quit until the job is done. Pretty funny ending though. What a lot of people don't know is that the American version of this was Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise who remade it as "The End." I watched it once then resold it on ebay for twice what I paid - hurrah! It's out of print so its tough to find, unless you hit a flea market or an old 1980's video store that has this, Adventures of Pac-Man, and the original copies of all 9 Friday the 13ths..good luck!...7 out of 10 (average rating).
Reviewed by 6 / 10

Very Odd

Graham Chapman returns home for his fifth anniversary, to discover that wife Diana Quick is leaving him. He's dull. After driving around half of London, she stays at mutual friend Tony Sloane's home. Chapman gets drunk. The next morning, Miss Quick calls, and he decides to commit suicide, but can't figure out how. That's when odd jobs man David Jason knocks on the door. They decide that he'll kill him unexpectedly over the next few days. Then Miss Quick returns and he changes his mind. Jason, however, does an honest bit of work, even though he keeps killing the wrong person. He keeps trying to off Chapman, though.Comedians trying to kill themselves dates back at least to Max Linder in LE PENDU. The idea of hiring someone to kill yourself and then changing your mind at least to Jules Verne in LES TRIBULATIONS D'UN CHINOIS EN CHINE, which was made into a movie by de Broca starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. So this has a long lineage.What will surprise people is that Chapman, despite his Monty Python roots, is not particularly funny. He is, as Miss Quick notes, dull, and his reactions to the situations are bizarre rather than funny. He is the center around which the comic characters circle, especially Jason, but also cops Edward Hardwicke, and an assemblage of mobsters hired to protect him from his would-be assassin. Still, there are plenty of things to laugh at in this black comedy.
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