As essential to any student house as traffic cones and pasta, it's easy to dismiss Withnail And I as the tedious obsession of drunken undergrads with too much time on their hands. Easy. And wrong. Bruce Robinson's semi-autobiographical tale of two `resting' actors at the fag-end of the '60s is an evocative depiction of a too readily romanticised era, and a moving tribute to a lost friendship. It's also bloody funny. Teetotaller Richard E Grant is extraordinary as Withnail, a bitter, drunken aristocratic thespian who goes "on holiday by mistake" with the angst-ridden `I' (Paul McGann) and his gay-as-Liberace Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths). The plot's threadbare, but the pleasure is in the perfectly realised characters, superb performances and endlessly quotable, scabrous dialogue.

DVD Extras:

Withnail And Us documentary, trailer, commentary with Paul McGann and Ralph Brown, photos by Ralph Steadman. The superb print and newly created 5.1 soundtrack are the main, but not the only, reasons to buy this endlessly rewatchable flick on DVD. McCann and Brown (the latter is Camberwell Carrot-merchant Danny) spark off each other in a haze of nostalgia, keeping their commentary entertaining as well as informative, while the antipathy between Robinson and Grant gives an otherwise pedestrian documentary real edge. And you can't beat Grant's assessment of Handmade Films exec Denis O'Brien, who thought the movie "wasn't funny" and wanted to shut it down: "the stupid fucker got it all wrong, didn't he?"