The greatest movie ever made..!

Load of rubbish!!

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Abigail's Party: 2/10. This is a poorly lit (especially first half) extremely stagy TV show (basically a filmed play.) Highly regarded by some critics but at close to two hours with 5 very unpleasant people it hardly ranks as entertainment. The main character Beverly reminds one of Peg from Married with Children but with no Al to provide the counter pointing laughs she remains strangely unchallenged throughout. In fact the description of Abigail's Party as a comedy is a bit of a puzzler as this is drama writ large. A true character exercise only a stage actor could love. While insightful into the desperation of some of the middle class of England, countless movies and shows have exposed middle class foibles with better results. Even a half hour sitcom like "Keeping Up Appearances" covers the same ground more completely and with many more laughs. Truth be told these people would be miserable no matter what class they were in and like a trapped guest I was looking to leave Abigail's Party as soon as I could.

I recently played Tony in a drama production, it is a brilliant play, its unbelievable painful but our whole team managed to bring out all the characters, our beverly was more stereotypical, patronising and exaggerated than ever, and our angela was more repulsive than ever. Any way mike liegh has done a great job in creating a play showing stereotypical adults of the 70's It was interesting to see how people act under times of stress and although exaggerated its shows how people coped in the 70's which was top get drunk and smoke. To be honest with you i think the teenagers at the party were being better behaved.Well done Mike a brilliant play and TV drama that will be echoed in drama studios across England for years.

I reckon that this is the sort of movie that gets film students all excited. There are so many levels to this flick that you could probably go on for days pulling apart and examining the different characters, relationships and commentaries. But I recommend you watch this film purely for entertainment purposes - it's great. The actors are believable, the story is simplistic (yet so effective) and the period touches are great - because this is essentialy a period drama (the period being very firmly in the 1970s). For a film to have such little plot yet remain so compelling is testament to each and every element that makes up this movie. Watch it.

I was most impressed by this film, which is really a theatre play on a similar theme to American Beauty, but I will need some time to mentally recover from it.Certainly the set design and the characters costumes are magnificent examples of their time and social milieu. The particular combination of these five characters- two relatively recently married dysfunctional 'heterosexual' couples and a sad 'divorcee'- sets up some fascinating tensions in the realm of inter-personal relations. The plot is like a psychotherapy case study about relations between men and women, and the acting is compelling. Alison Steadman's Beverly is grating but consistent and convincing- hard to forget. I could empathise with the anguish felt by her husband Laurence (Tim Stern), a pathetic aspiring social climber. He is justly appalled by Beverly's narcissistic indulgence as an ingratiating and domineering hostess with the aid of his 'financial support'.Angela (Jane Duvitski) is very well acted, as a spineless sycophant, except for her closing rendition of a leg cramp. Her husband Tony (John Salthouse) is beautifully portrayed, with brewing anger suppressing violence. Susan (Harriet Reynolds) is similarly intriguing, but by the end of the film, it is finally apparent that her part is actually just boring. The most astute and engaging role model is that of Susan's ex-husband, who is happily divorced and by all accounts enjoying himself at a healthy distance away from this suburban collection of sick, sad, and miserable company.