Laurence Sterne's eighteenth-century novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a jumbled tale that exposes us to the wildness of life and the excursions taken by those whose ego cannot be tamed. You can plan all you want to, but day by day the boisterous outrageousness of life challenges us to give up all efforts of control and instead just go with the flow. Director Michael Winterbottom (Welcome to Sarajevo, Wonderland, In This World, Code 46) always takes on seemingly impossible tales — and this one is no exception. No one has ever dared to make a movie out of Sterne's novel, since everyone assumed it was impossible to do so. But not for the imaginative Winterbottom. Armed with a clever screenplay by Martin Hardy, he has come up with a hilarious tale that shuttles back and forth from the eighteenth century novel to a movie being made about it in our time.
Standing in front of his ancestral home, Tristram Shandy (Steve Coogan) introduces himself directly to the movie audience, and tells us that he wants to unspool his story by recounting his own birth — but he is side-tracked by a diversionary note about his Uncle Toby (Rob Brydon) and his friend Corporal Trim (Raymond Waring) who are obsessed with recreating a 1695 battle where Toby was injured in his private parts. When he finally returns to the story of his nativity, we learn that Tristram's father was responsible for bringing his son into the world with a bloody nose. His mother Elizabeth (Keeley Hawes) calls for a midwife but has to endure the pain and agony of giving birth with Dr. Slop (Dylan Moran) who pulls her son's head out of the womb with forceps. Her servant Susannah (Shirley Anderson) nurtures the baby boy after this damaging entry into the world.
The filming of this scene does not appeal to Mark (Jeremy Northham), the director of the movie. Meanwhile, Steve Coogan (who is playing both Tristram Shandy and his father) is unhappy that his shoes make him look shorter than Rob Brydon, the actor playing Uncle Toby. His girlfriend Jenny (Kelly Macdonald) has arrived on the set with their six-month old son for a visit. But Steve barely has a moment in his packed schedule. He has to test a prop womb that is to be used for his birth scene and then there is the unsavory news from his agent that a lap dancer is about to share with the tabloids an account of her ribald evening with the actor. At the same time, an attractive production runner named Jennie (Naomie Harris), who is responsible for keeping tabs on Steve, flirts with him shamelessly and shares long accounts of her favorite movie scenes in Bresson and Fassbinder.
Joe (Ian Hart), the screenwriter of the film within the film, has written a treatment of a love affair in the novel centered around Widow Wadham's fascination with Uncle Toby' war wound. A quick call is made to Gillian Anderson in Hollywood, and because she loves Sterne's novel, she agrees to fly over and do the part. This aggravates Steve who has grown increasingly agitated over the growing importance of Brydon's character in the film.
At one point in a discussion about Sterne's novel and the movie they are making about it, Steve tells the creative folk that if it is "genuinely funny" that's enough. Winterbottom and company have made a genuinely funny movie that takes into its comic embrace the silly, often confusing, and continuously endearing experience that is the human adventure.
