Product Description

Michael Palin (A Fish Called Wanda) and Maggie Smith (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood) star in this delectable, wicked little comedy (Playboy) that puts a devout missionary into a precarious position! Reverend Charles Fortescue (Palin) has a problem. His boss, the bishop (Denholm Elliott), wants him to minister to the city's fallen women. But when Fortescue begins recruiting converts from the streets, he discovers that these lusty ladies are only willing to submit to salvation if they are permitted to share his bed! Hilarious and sexy, The Missionary is charming [and] buoyant (The New York Times)!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54438 in DVD
• Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
• Released on: 2003-04-01
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 87 minutes

Customer Reviews

A Missionary With a Difference
Michael Palin plays a missionary who has just returned after ten years in Africa. He has a fiancé waiting and has high hopes for a good position.

But all does not go as planned. He keeps running into an intriguing woman, his fiancé is obsessed with filing, and his church wants him to tackle the growing problem of "fallen women" working in the docklands.

Faced with the task of setting up a mission in London, he must find funding and souls to save. But to do either he finds that he may have to extend a different sort of kindness. One that gets him money and fills the mission with prospects.

But, again, all is not well. Other churches are jealous, all of their prospects want to go to Palin's mission. His funding source gets jealous and stops funding. He learns of a murder plot that he must stop. He must even go against the wishes of the church in order to save the women.

All of this is wrapped in a sort of dry British humor. We have the fiancé who is utterly obsessed with filing, a butler who can't go from one room to another without getting lost, and all sorts of subtle gags. In the middle is Palin as the straight man dealing with it all.

A good movie, but I have to agree with others that I can't believe MGM released it only in full-screen (several scenes have only a character's nose making it onto the screen).

'Modified to fit your screen."
How could MGM release a fullscreen only version of a film at this late date? I'm afraid that this lovely film is too obscure ever to be re-issued in the correct aspect ratio. I hope I'm proved wrong.

Try to change the world, and the world changes you!
After ten years of heroic missionary work, the Rev. Charles Fortesque is recalled from Africa and reassigned to the most pressing problem of the Church of England - to reform "fallen women" who work on the back streets of East London. Yet, ironically, by a strange twist of fate, it is he who is reformed by a woman who once was "fallen". Or, is it that he always does the decent thing? I loved the reversals!