''Splitting Heirs'' is a 1993 British
black comedy
Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discu ...
film directed by
Robert Young and starring
Eric Idle,
Rick Moranis
Frederick Allan Moranis (; born April 18, 1953) is a Canadian actor, comedian, musician, songwriter, writer and producer. He appeared in the sketch comedy series ''Second City Television'' (''SCTV'') in the 1980s and several Hollywood films, inc ...
,
Barbara Hershey
Barbara Lynn Herzstein, better known as Barbara Hershey (born February 5, 1948), is an American actress. In a career spanning more than 50 years, she has played a variety of roles on television and in cinema in several genres, including weste ...
,
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Catherine Zeta-Jones (; born 25 September 1969) is a Welsh actress. Known for her versatility, she is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Tony Award. In 2010, she was appointed C ...
,
John Cleese and
Sadie Frost
Sadie Liza Frost (née Vaughan; born 19 June 1965) is an English actress, producer and fashion designer, who ran fashion label Frost French (until its closure in 2011) and a film production company (Blonde to Black Pictures).
Early life
Frost ...
. It features music by
Michael Kamen
Michael Arnold Kamen (April 15, 1948 – November 18, 2003) was an American composer (especially of film scores), orchestral arranger, orchestral conductor, songwriter, and session musician.
Biography Early life
Michael Arnold Kamen was born ...
. It was entered in the
1993 Cannes Film Festival
The 46th Cannes Film Festival was held from 13 to 24 May 1993. The Palme d'Or went to '' Farewell My Concubine'' by Chen Kaige and '' The Piano'' by Jane Campion.
The festival opened with ''My Favorite Season'', directed by André Téchiné and c ...
.
Plot
The film centers on the
aristocratic
Aristocracy (, ) is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. The term derives from the el, αριστοκρατία (), meaning 'rule of the best'.
At the time of the word' ...
family of the Dukes of Bournemouth, upon which misfortune has fallen throughout history, leading its members to believe that the family is cursed. The most recent heir, Thomas Henry Butterfly Rainbow Peace, was left in a restaurant as an infant in the 1960s; by the time his parents remembered him, he had disappeared. Meanwhile, in the 1990s Tommy Patel has grown up in an Asian/Indian family in
Southall
Southall () is a large suburban county of West London, England, part of the London Borough of Ealing and is one of its seven major towns. It is situated west of Charing Cross and had a population of 69,857 as of 2011. It is generally divided ...
, never doubting his ethnicity despite being taller than anyone else in the house, fair-haired, blue-eyed, light-skinned—and not liking curry. From the family corner shop he commutes to the City where he works for the Bournemouth family's stockbroking firm, handling multimillion-pound deals.
Tommy is given the job of acting as host to the visiting American representative of the firm, Henry Bullock, who turns out to be the son of the head of the firm, the present Duke. They become friends and the friendship survives Henry becoming the new Duke when his father dies. Circumstantial evidence shows that the true Bournemouth heir is actually Tommy; we see a series of family portraits each of which captures something of Tommy's facial characteristics, and his Indian mother tells him the story of his adoption. He consults the lawyer who dealt with his adoption, Raoul P. Shadgrind, who says Tommy has no hope of proving his claim, but plants the idea of him obtaining his rightful place in the family by getting Henry out of the way; Shadgrind himself then engineers a variety of 'accidents' in the belief that he will share in the spoils as Tommy's partner. Love interest is provided by Tommy's and Henry's (shared at the same time) lover, later the new Duchess and their (shared at different times) mother, the dowager Duchess. The final resolution of everyone's doubts and misconceptions leaves everyone living "happily ever after – "well, for a bit, at least..."
Cast
Reception
The film received mostly negative reviews and currently has a score of 8% on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
based on 13 reviews.
Roger Ebert of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' gave the film a mixed review. He believed much of the humor was lost on American audiences, while Hershey's performance was the film's highlight yet Idle and Moranis should have switched roles.
Box office
The film grossed £1.3 million ($1.9 million) in the United Kingdom. It performed poorly in the United States and Canada with a gross of just $3.2 million.
Video release
The film has been released on VHS in the United States and Britain. A
Region 1 DVD has been released in the United States, and a
Nordic edition
Region 2 DVD was released in 2010. A Blu-ray was released through Mill Creek Entertainment on 19 October 2021.
References
External links
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{{Robert Young
1993 films
1990s black comedy films
1990s sex comedy films
1990s comedy thriller films
British black comedy films
British sex comedy films
Films about murder
Films about royalty
Films set in the 1960s
Films set in the 1990s
Films with screenplays by Eric Idle
Films directed by Robert Young
Universal Pictures films
Films scored by Michael Kamen
1993 comedy films
1990s English-language films
1990s British films