The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977)

(YouTube Streaming, April 2021) I’m not often surprised by movie discussions, but when a colleague suggested The Last Remake of Beau Geste in the same lineage as Airplane! and Top Secret!, I had to admit that I’d never even heard of the film. Moments later, as I was looking up the film, seeing Ann-Margret in the cast sealed a hasty viewing. And my colleague was right — as far as silly absurdist comedies go, this is a film that feels more modern than its production date. Writer-director-star Marty Feldman goes for a wide variety of comic devices here, from dumb slapstick to meta-moviemaking jokes. The story takes off from the classic Beau Geste novels but soon turns to utter lunacy, as Michael York plays the impossibly virtuous Beau Geste, Feldman plays his bug-eyed “twin” brother and Ann-Margret schemes to steal the family fortune. We end up in the desert with the French Legion, taking aim at wartime movie clichés and meeting Gary Cooper (through the magic of editing shots of his 1930s take on Beau Geste against Feldman goofing off). A surprising number of familiar actors show up, from James Earl Jones playing a tribal chief to Terry-Thomas and Skip Milligan reinforcing the decidedly deep roots of the result in British comedy. Not every joke lands, is witty, or has aged well. (There’s a “used camel salesman” bit that really isn’t funny these days.) But the comedy has a fast-paced, almost anarchic quality that feels as if it emerged from the 1980s rather than the 1970s. The result is quite funny, and it’s a surprise to find out that The Last Remake of Beau Geste is somewhat forgotten today, perhaps overshadowed by later, more celebrated examples of the same kind of broad-shot comedy.