Film

Tom Jones

Name: Tom Jones
Genre: Comedy, Romance, History
Released: 1963
Cast: Albert Finney, Susannah York, Hugh Griffith, Edith Evans, Joan Greenwood

Tom Jones is a romp in the truest sense: bawdy, breathless, and endlessly pleased with itself. Tony Richardson's Oscar-winning take on Fielding's sprawling novel turns 18th-century England into a playground of appetite — food, sex, class, luck — narrated with winks, freeze-frames and asides straight to camera. Albert Finney is pure charm as the foundling who can't stop tumbling into trouble. Fast, funny, never solemn.

TMDb rating

5.9

If you liked this

The Favourite2018

Same appetite for period bawdiness and class comedy, sharpened into vicious court intrigue — three women scheming and humiliating each other in corsets while the film cackles along with them.

But Olivia Colman's monarch is pathetic rather than charming, and the humour here is far crueler than Tom Jones's warm mischief.

Barry Lyndon1975

Another picaresque rise-and-fall through 18th-century Europe, shot like a painting and paced like a funeral march — gorgeous, cold, and devastating where Tom Jones is warm and forgiving.

But Three hours of deliberate, glacial pacing; if you want Finney's grin and energy, Kubrick's control will feel like the opposite mood entirely.

Dangerous Liaisons1988

Class, seduction and social climbing turn genuinely dangerous here — the same 18th-century games of desire, played for blood instead of laughs, with Glenn Close and John Malkovich at their most lethal.

But It's a tragedy dressed as a comedy of manners; nobody gets the happy tumble into love that Tom Jones promises.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Parasite2019

Both are essentially about class as a game that can be gamed, an outsider talking and scheming their way upward, just told in wildly different registers: one a period lark, the other a modern nightmare.

Bong Joon-ho's class satire runs on the same engine as Tom Jones — an outsider infiltrating a world of wealth and manners through wit and nerve — rewired as a thriller with teeth.

But There's no romance, no romp, and the tone curdles into violence and dread that Tom Jones never comes near.

Amadeus1984

The same irreverent, theatrical approach to history — vulgar jokes, big performances, a hero who can't behave — just swap Fielding's England for Mozart's Vienna and add a soundtrack for the ages.

But It's about genius and jealousy rather than love and luck, and runs longer and heavier than Tom Jones's romp.

Shakespeare in Love1998

A cheeky, anachronistic period romance that treats history as a playground rather than a museum piece, full of wit, cross-dressing, and star-crossed lovers dodging class and convention.

But It's gentler and more sentimental, without the appetite for outright bawdiness and moral chaos running through Tom Jones.

Kind Hearts and Coronets1949

A drier, blacker British comedy about class and inheritance, with Alec Guinness playing eight variations on the aristocracy Tom Jones is busy mocking from below.

But It's murder-comedy rather than romance, and its wit is clipped and deadpan where Tom Jones is loud and physical.

Sense and Sensibility1995

Austen's take on love thwarted by money and rank plays the same board, just with more restraint, better manners, and a heroine instead of a rogue at the centre.

But There's no bawdiness, no picaresque chaos, and considerably less appetite for trouble than Tom Jones ever shows.

The Libertine2004no page yet

Johnny Depp as the real Restoration rake John Wilmot, drinking and seducing his way through court and consequence — Tom Jones's appetite without the safety net of a happy ending.

But It's grim rather than gleeful, more interested in rot and ruin than in romance and redemption.

A Room with a View1986

A gentler cousin: love crossing class lines in beautiful English and Italian settings, with the same belief that passion should win out over propriety, if slower to admit it.

But It's Merchant Ivory restraint rather than New Wave cheek — no fourth-wall winks, no bawdy jokes, just quiet longing.

A Cock and Bull Story2005

Sterne and Fielding were rival contemporaries writing the same digressive, winking English comic novel, and this adaptation borrows Tom Jones's own trick — direct address, narrator intrusion, freeze frames — and turns it up to eleven.

A film about actors trying to film an unfilmable 18th-century novel, breaking the fourth wall constantly and gleefully — Steve Coogan doing to Sterne what Richardson did to Fielding.

But It's shaggy and self-aware, more interested in comedy about filmmaking than in romance or plot, closer to a mockumentary than a period drama.

The Go-Between1971no page yet

Same period, same core conflict of desire crossing class lines, same English setting, but where Tom Jones forgives everyone and rewards appetite, this film shows the wreckage a rigid class system actually leaves behind.

The same English countryside, the same class divide keeping two lovers apart, but told as elegy rather than farce — a boy carrying messages between a lady and a farmer, paying for it for the rest of his life.

But It's slow and mournful, offering none of Tom Jones's comic mercy — this is what happens when the same story refuses to be funny.