One Paragraph Movie Review: If…

Two hundred and fiftieth (!) film: If…, a 1968 anti-establishment bit set in an English boarding school that blurs the line between reality and Malcolm McDowell’s imagination. With lots and lots of British class tradition almost indistinguishable from the school part of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, the premise is pretty simple: McDowell’s character Mick is sick of stuffy condescension and rule-following, and yearns to spearhead an uprising inspired by the revolutionaries he fanboys over. Some bits are definitely real and some bits are probably schoolboy fantasy, and it made me think in two different ways. On the one hand it’s a comment about conformity versus freedom, and its message can be applied wherever oppression rears its stiff-collared head. On the other hand, it’s a bored, rich teenager getting fed up with mid-level inconveniences and chucking a spit, which is less easy to care about. A bit grubby, a bit posh, and a bit peculiar. Two and a quarter warmed toilet seats out of five.