[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_magic_christian_dvd.jpg]]

->''"If you want it, here it is, come and get it\\
Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm make your mind up fast\\
If you want it anytime, I can give it\\
But you better hurry 'cause it may not last\\
Did I hear you say that there must be a catch?\\
Will you walk away from a fool and his money?\\
Sonny, if you want it, here it is, come and get it\\
But you better hurry 'cause it's going fast!"''
-->-- '''Music/{{Badfinger}}''', "Come and Get It"

''The Magic Christian'' is a 1969 film based on Creator/TerrySouthern's 1959 book of the same name, starring Creator/PeterSellers and Music/RingoStarr. Before you ask, the name is taken from a boat, and has nothing to do with [[ReligionIsMagic magic Christians]].

Sellers plays Sir Guy Grand, a billionaire who wants to have some fun. He adopts the homeless Youngman Grand (Ringo Starr), and together they set out to see what lengths people will go to for money. The answer is, ''pretty far''.

Features cameos by Creator/GrahamChapman and Creator/JohnCleese (who also wrote additional material for the script), before Creator/MontyPython had really taken off. Creator/SpikeMilligan also appears, in a suitably surreal scene, alongside fellow [[Radio/TheGoonShow Goon]] Sellers.

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!!This work contains the following examples:

* AdultAdoptee: Youngman Grand, within the first ten minutes of the film.
* BriefcaseFullOfMoney: Used to bribe other people to participate in Guy Grand's schemes and a symbol for greed in general.
* TheCameo: Creator/SpikeMilligan, Creator/JohnCleese, Creator/GrahamChapman, Creator/RomanPolanski, Creator/YulBrynner, Creator/ChristopherLee, Creator/RichardAttenborough, Creator/SpikeMilligan, Creator/RaquelWelch... plus numerous other well-known performers (at least to British audiences).
* CanonForeigner: Ringo Starr's character did not appear in the original novel.
* ComedicSociopathy
* CorruptingPornography: Discussed. Youngman and Guy Grand briefly discuss getting around censorship of pornographic novels by leaving blank spaces, represented by Youngman playing a clarinet. Guy also suggests doing the same with Literature/TheBible
-->''Youngman Grand'': Panting with desire, Lord Peter ripped open her *toot*, revealing her *toot*, and leaning forward and *toot toot* her.
* {{Crossdresser}}: Played by [[spoiler:Yul Brynner]], of all people.
* Dominatrix: In the engine room scene, a woman is dressed as one, complete with whip. When Youngman and several other characters enter the engine room, she whips one man, who immediately kneels down, pulls his jacket off, and asks her to do it again.
* EccentricMillionaire: Actually a ''billionaire''.
* EveryManHasHisPrice: Whether it be eating a parking ticket for £500 or £30,000 for the nose of a supposed Creator/{{Rembrandt|VanRijn}}. There are also unknown amounts in briefcases of money for messing with a Sotheby's auction, a Cambridge and Oxford boat race, the chaos aboard the Magic Christian among others. Also, they pay various wads of cash to random people to do whatever they want. At the end, ({{Squick}} alert) [[spoiler: we find that people are willing to swim through blood, piss, and fecal matter for "free" money.]]
* EveryoneHasStandards: When they bribe the traffic cop to eat the parking ticket, Guy tells the cop that he doesn't need to eat the plastic wrapping of the ticket (but eats it anyway).
* GainaxEnding: The entire film consists of Sellers' character bribing people to no advantage of his own, merely to exploit their weaknesses, in surreal, bizarre and nonsensical scenarios. But the voyage towards the end of the film takes the surrealism to another level, with transvestites, an attack, Dracula and King Kong, before [[spoiler: the entire sequence is revealed to have taken place inside a warehouse.]]
* {{Gaslighting}}:
** The "Punishment" scene in the train where Guy Grand and a group of asian men of different heights confuse the hell out of a millionaire [[ThoseWackyNazis who is then is taken away by Nazis.]]
** Also, the fake hijacking once on the ship.
** And most of the shenanigans on the ship.
* LoveAtFirstSight: Guy claims that he experienced this upon meeting Youngman, [[HoYay quickly adding that he means it paternally, of course]].
* ManlyGay: The two boxers.
* ManOfWealthAndTaste
* MegaCorp: Grand and Son Holdings Limited. In the boardroom scene it is revealed they have divisions for television, nuclear, international, medical, insurance, biochemist, ballistics, zoological, aerospace, architecture, design, geological, financial, telecommunications and more.
* MoneyFetish
* MoneyToThrowAway: Guy Grand is so ridiculously wealthy that he can dispose of massive sums of money just to prove that people will do anything for it.
* MoreDakka: The hunting scene in which Tommy Guns, tanks, and {{BFG}}s are used to hunt grouse.
* OpeningMonologue: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is what is commonly known as money. It comes in all sizes, colours, and denominations, like people. [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall We'll be using quite a bit of it in the next two hours;]] luckily, [[MoneyToThrowAway I have enough for all of us!"]]
* RepurposedPopSong[=/=]IsntItIronic: At the TurnOfTheMillennium, Pontiac used "Come and Get It" in an ad campaign for sports cars. Beyond the song itself being about ''greed'', apparently, no one who worked on this campaign saw the movie, because if they had, they would have known about the parody of cars as a status symbol early on (with Guy Grand presenting the concept of a new luxury car that's ''insanely'' big, ostentatious, and British).
* RichBitch: Most of the people upon the Magic Christian and the other millionaires Guy Grand surrounds himself with
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Also "Screw The Rules, I'm ''Getting'' Money!"
* SerialEscalation: How much will people debase themselves for cash? [[spoiler: Turns out people will ''swim through shit'' for cash.]]
* SmokingIsNotCool: When Youngman asks Guy if these shops that appear sell ciggies, Guy responds that they do not, as smoking has been linked to lung cancer.
* SunglassesAtNight: Until the adoption is finalised, Youngman wears sunglasses at all times, even whilst he's inside a sleeping bag. In the opening sequence, he explains that the light hurts his eyes.
* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: Hunting fowl with an antiaircraft gun.
* {{Troll}}: Guy Grand and Son.
* UpperClassTwit: A few of Guy Grand's fellow millionaires fit the bill. Grand himself sometimes [[ObfuscatingStupidity plays it up to put the targets of his trolling off guard]].
* UnwinnableTrainingSimulation: [[spoiler: The titular luxury cruiser? It's actually a warehouse.]]
* VehicleTitle: ''The Magic Christian'' is the name of the ship on which the movie is set.
* YouCanLeaveYourHatOn: In a FunnyBackgroundEvent, Laurence Harvey performs Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'s "to be or not to be" soliloquy as a striptease.

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