Blu-ray: The Party
Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers on form in influential if excruciating 1960s comedy
There are two elephants in Blake Edwards’ 1968 comedy The Party. One appears literally at the film’s climax, emblazoned with graffiti. More significant, and troubling, is the metaphorical elephant in the room: that we’re invited to laugh at a white comedian in brownface.
Namely Peter Sellers, impersonating an Indian actor who unwittingly wrecks an upmarket Hollywood shindig. His Hrundi V Bakshi is almost a retread of the character he played opposite Sophia Loren in 1960’s The Millionairess. Still, according to a talking head interviewed in one of the bonus features, the film “was very popular in India”. Hmmm. Best just to accept that things were different then, and be glad that such antediluvian attitudes are mostly a thing of the past.
Edwards’ and Sellers’ key influence was surely Jacques Tati
This is a comedy of social embarrassment, about the agonies of not fitting in. A pre-credits sequence shows Bakshi unwittingly sabotaging a historical epic, wearing a modern wristwatch and later blowing up most of the set. Told that he’ll never work again, Bakshi’s name is accidentally added to the guest list of a party held by the studio head. That’s about it plotwise, the scenario allowing for a sequence of elaborate semi-improvised scenes.
Despite the inevitable reservations about Sellers’ accent and appearance, much of what follows is very, very funny: a series of immaculately choreographed mishaps involving footwear, birds, food, wigs and toilet paper. Edwards, reconciled with Sellers after falling out during the making of A Shot in the Dark, used a video camera to immediately review each take, allowing the set pieces to be polished to perfection. And there are some brilliant moments, from an attempt to retrieve a lost shoe to an iconic exchange with a parrot. Birdie num num, anybody?
Edwards’ and Sellers’ key influence was surely Jacques Tati (though none of those interviewed in the bonus features admit this): Bakshi arrives at the party in a very Hulot-esque three-wheeler (pictured above), and the elaborate modernist set recalls Mon Oncle and Playtime. There are long stretches where Sellers’ character is on the periphery, and the sound mix often favours background noise over dialogue.
An elderly Edwards recalls that he’d originally wanted to make a film totally free of dialogue. It’s significant that The Party begins to unravel in its more conventional later stages, when Sellers begins to speak more and the semblance of a plot emerges. His Bakshi remains the most likeable character and duly gets the girl, blithely driving away from the party’s wreckage. Watch, and enjoy with a hefty dose of salt. Incidental pleasures include a cheesy Henry Mancini score (the title song featuring some excruciating Don Black lyrics), and the gloriously funky typeface used in the opening credits. The afore-mentioned bonus interviews suggest that all concerned had a groovy time making the film, and the restored image is vibrant.
Overleaf: watch the trailer for The Party
Witherspoon plays Alice, a putative interior decorator who also happens to be the daughter of an Oscar-winning director who has since died: hey, Freudian or what? On the outs from marriage to music biz mogul Austen (Michael Sheen), Alice has scooped up their two daughters and decamped from New York back to LA, where she readjusts nicely to life in the family manse, which happens to come with the kind of guest house that practically cries out to have three male 20somethings calling it home.
I'm not sure I know too many women of any age who would so readily allow long-term accommodation gratis to three blokes they met on a boozy night out, but then again, it doesn't hurt that the chaps' collective skills extend beyond the carnal to include the sorts of computer and handyman-related talents on which, I well realise, you really can't put a price. Throughout all this, the two young daughters seem blissfully untraumatised as one after another man hoves into view, Meyers-Shyer stretching to breaking point an ancillary plot point as to whether the sweet-seeming writer George (a genuinely appealing Jon Rudnitsky) will make it to the eldest child's self-penned school play on time. (Between this and Big Little Lies, Witherspoon seems to be drawn of late to celluloid ventures involving theatre: is she hinting at wanting to try some stage work herself?) 
Throughout the film an iPod shuffle soundtrack is deployed drawn from the Grand Theft Auto playlist, turning every action sequence into an oh-so-ironic music video. Foreigner’s "I Want to Know What Love Is" plays out against slo-mo slaughter at a funeral (complete with flying canapés and corpses); grating heavy metal enhances torture by a tattooed henchman; Ram Jam’s version of "Black Betty" provides the earworm for a chain-choking scene in a hardware store. Unfortunately, in the wake of Baby Driver with its niftily executed marriage of music to action, The Hitman’s Bodyguard fails to hit any new beats. 
When not involved in chasing and shooting, the two leads settle down to lengthy exposition on their lives (cue a dirge-like flashback to formative childhood traumas designed to engender sympathy for Kincaid's career choice as paid killer). Our heroes debate their relative moral superiority: ‘Who is more wicked? He who kills the evil motherfuckers or he who protects them?’; but even more turgid is the endless banter about romance and Bryce's regrests about losing his Interpol sweetheart (Elodie Yung). 
Feinstein gets it right in a bonus interview, suggesting that “if you don't expect too much, you'll be overwhelmed.” The high spots make the film unmissable, its eye-popping visuals created decades before the advent of CGI. The songs are mostly memorable – notably a nightmarish number sung by a satanic lift operator, and Terwilliger’s ode to the joys of cross-dressing.
Susan's workmate/bestie is played by Sara Silverman, her bosom tormented by a pushup bra and smothered in tattoos. She has a tendency to flirt with Henry. Again, one wonders what induced an intelligent actor to take this part? The movie then mutates from quirky family comedy to psychodrama, Suffering silently in the house next door is Henry’s classmate Christina, a ‘tween beauty played by Maddie Ziegler (pictured above) who is most famous from regular appearances in the TV hit Dance Moms and a very dodgy Sia video with Shia LaBoeuf). Only Henry knows Christina's dark secret; she is being abused by her wicked stepfather (Dean Norris from Breaking Bad) who just happens to be the local chief of police so no one believes Henry when he sounds the alert…