Main Cast: Peter Cook, Denholm Elliott, Ronald Fraser, Arthur Lowe, Vanessa Howard
Release Year: 1970
Country: UK
Run Time: 94 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Like Socrates of ancient Athens, Michael Rimmer (Peter Cook) of modern England believes the key to success is to ask the right questions. Lots of questions. So he gets a job with an advertising agency that conducts polls, rises swiftly through the ranks, and eventually runs the agency. Then he bombards England with questions. His ingenious system enables him to predict the outcome of a general election. (Every voter in England had received a questionnaire.) So accomplished is Rimmer at asking questions that he finds his future wife through market research. To insure that he gets the right answers, Rimmer is not above manipulating the polls. For example, when he asks residents of Coventry their religion, 95 percent identify themselves as Buddhists, thanks to an influx of Rimmer stooges. Then he enters politics. In a short time, he gets himself elected to Parliament, becomes a cabinet minister and eventually moves into Ten Downing Street as prime minister after pushing the incumbent prime minister off an oil platform. By this time, every eligible voter in Britain can cast ballots with a television remote control. Alas, the electorate tires of the endless referendum questions that they must answer as part of their daily routine. This development serves only to catapult Rimmer to further success, for the people decide to place all decisions in his hands as dictator of England. So Rimmer keeps rising and rising and rising. And asking questions. ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide
Review
Although The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer fell and fell at the box office after it was released in 1969, it earned cult status among moviegoers who appreciate wildly imaginative films. Through preposterous hyperbole, the kind that crowns a mouse king of an elephant herd, it satirizes the use of opinion polls to plumb the electorate and shape a country's future. In doing so, the film correctly prophesies the 21st century's excessive use of such polls, the kind that ordained Al Gore as victor in Florida in the 2000 U.S. presidential election. Pundits and politicians regularly refer to the film to call attention to the possibility that excessive polling could undermine representative democracy. Droll Peter Cook, a favorite in Britain, stars as the devilishly clever Michael Rimmer, a man who uses and manipulates opinion polls to rise from nobody to prime minister of England. Of course, history dictates that everyone who rises must also fall, like Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Napoleon, and George III. But not Rimmer. He keeps on rising and rising. The production also brings together for the first time the comedic genius of future Monty Python regulars John Cleese and Graham Chapman, who wrote the original script and acted in the film. Cook later rewrote the script. The film includes a cast of characters with Dickensian names such as Snaggot, Spot, Blocket, Spimm, Poot, and Fromage (the French word for cheese). ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide
Carmen Dillon - Art Director, Ken Lewington - Costume Designer, Michael Dryhurst - First Assistant Director, Kevin Billington - Director, Stanley Hawkes - Editor, David Frost - Executive Producer, John Cameron - Composer (Music Score), Alex Thomson - Cinematographer, Harry Fine - Producer, Kevin Billington - Screenwriter, Graham Chapman - Screenwriter, John Cleese - Screenwriter, Peter Cook - Screenwriter
The mysterious Michael Rimmer (Peter Cook) appears at a small and ailing British advertising agency, where the employees assume he is working on a time and motion study. However, he quickly begins to assert a de facto authority over the firm’s mostly ineffectual staff and soon acquires control of the business from the incompetent boss Ferret (Arthur Lowe). Rimmer then succeeds in establishing the newly invigorated firm as the country’s leading polling agency, and begins to make regular TV appearances as a polling expert. He subsequently moves into politics, acting as an adviser to the leader of the Tory opposition, and then becomes an MP himself, for the constituency of Budleigh Moor (a reference to Cook's frequent collaborator, Dudley Moore), along the way acquiring a trophy wife. Relying on a combination of charisma and deception, he then rapidly works his way up the political ladder to become prime minister, and, finally, by public demand, a near-dictatorial president.
The film satirised the growing influence of PR, spin and opinion polls in British politics,[1] as well as parodying political figures of the time such as Harold Wilson and Enoch Powell. Peter Cook admitted later that he had partly based his portrayal of the Rimmer character on David Frost, who had provided funding for the film.[2]
