John Cleese (“Rat Race”, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”) can make me laugh but here we see him star in a movie that puts all of its effort into making Cleese look great but nothing else.

In “Clockwise”, we meet a strict, British school headmaster named Brian Stimpson (Cleese), who is obsessed with keeping everything on time. He is the chairman of some headmasters’ union and is on his way to deliver a speech. Things go badly wrong for Stimpson as after a misunderstanding he misses his train and resorts to getting a student to drive him to Norwich. On the way he steals, he vandalises and is pretends to be a monk. Also, various people including his wife believe Stimpson has ‘gone off’ with the schoolgirl so they all go on a mad hunt to capture him.

John Cleese is very good in “Clockwise” as Stimpson. You actually sympathize with him as he’s a victim of circumstance. As the film goes on you realize he’s actually quite a nice person and you even feel that aside from this occasion, his way of life is very efficient. The other cast members are alright but they don’t really make you laugh in the way they should.

Apart from John Cleese’s character and performance it’s tricky to find anything amusing in this picture; this is the downfall of the film as you can’t just have one good character and that’s it. You could have done so much with this idea of trying to get somewhere on time. How about a drive through a shopping centre like in “The Blues Brothers”? How about a hostile bus takeover? These are just a few ideas that would have made this is a great movie. Also, another thing was that I wasn’t too happy with the ending as it seemed a little abrupt.