The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997) ***

The director of "The Singing Detective" teams up with the star of "Groundhog Day", and the result is a mix of "Comedy of Errors", "The Game", a James Bond thriller and a Marx Brothers comedy. It's a rollicking farce about British and Russian spies trying to bring back the Cold War, but thwarted in their attempts by a bumbling American tourist who thinks he's participating in an avant-garde theatrical performance. An amazingly inventive, hugely entertaining film, which could be described as a postmodernist brechtian comedy, a mise-en-abime of cinematic cliches, or a self-reflexive orgy of spy movie genre cannibalism.