A rather confusing and low-energy would-be spy-drama set immediately before the outbreak of World War 2, based on the true story of an exchange scheme between British and German children, designed to foster better Anglo-German relations as the shadow of impending war loomed.
So we find twenty teenage German girls based at a boarding school in one of the English counties just as the countdown to the outbreak of the war is fast approaching. As the young frauleins are the offspring of important Nazi personnel, it stands to reason that their vaters and mutters will want them safely back home before the inevitable declaration of war is made, which is the jumping-off point for a rather old-fashioned and clichéd supposed spy-thriller. The film commences with a teacher at the school seeking to pass on to his superiors this vital intelligence about the planned German invasion of Poland combined with details of British secret agents operating behind enemy lines but he is secretly murdered before he can do so which sees Eddie Izzard step forward as a replacement teacher likewise tasked to work undercover on behalf of the secret service.
In his way is Judi Dench's headmistress, sympathetic to Germany and devoted to her students in a Jean Brodie type-of-way, although the actual teaching of the girls is carried out by her young German-born assistant Carla Juri. Soon, Izzard's position comes under suspicion as in true Richard Hannay style he is forced on the run with no-one believing his story. The film eventually winds its way to a would-be climax on the local beach as the incoming plane to uplift the girls arrives but sorry, "The 39 Steps" this isn't.
I really found the film to be underwritten, muddled and ultimately unconvincing. Izzard is hard to accept as a proto-James Bond action-hero type. With no real dramatic tension on display at any time, the film just trundled along to a rather flat finish. The acting and cinematography was just okay with the direction likewise lacking spark.
There were also just too many implausible occurrences to contend with, from Izzard's miraculously avoiding death from no less than three separate point-blank shots aimed at him as well as coming through a brutal beating by another pesky German double agent, to Dench's ignorance of what's going on under her own roof even when she walks in on an anti-Semitic lesson given by Juri.
The acting too was rather ordinary I felt by all and sundry and I include Dench and Jim Broadbent in that sweeping criticism. Maybe it's just that I didn't get the movie I anticipated from the blurb, but even once I adapted my expectations, it still failed to hold or entertain me.
Sorry, but I really think that all concerned should have gone back to school themselves before serving up this disappointingly slight entertainment.
So we find twenty teenage German girls based at a boarding school in one of the English counties just as the countdown to the outbreak of the war is fast approaching. As the young frauleins are the offspring of important Nazi personnel, it stands to reason that their vaters and mutters will want them safely back home before the inevitable declaration of war is made, which is the jumping-off point for a rather old-fashioned and clichéd supposed spy-thriller. The film commences with a teacher at the school seeking to pass on to his superiors this vital intelligence about the planned German invasion of Poland combined with details of British secret agents operating behind enemy lines but he is secretly murdered before he can do so which sees Eddie Izzard step forward as a replacement teacher likewise tasked to work undercover on behalf of the secret service.
In his way is Judi Dench's headmistress, sympathetic to Germany and devoted to her students in a Jean Brodie type-of-way, although the actual teaching of the girls is carried out by her young German-born assistant Carla Juri. Soon, Izzard's position comes under suspicion as in true Richard Hannay style he is forced on the run with no-one believing his story. The film eventually winds its way to a would-be climax on the local beach as the incoming plane to uplift the girls arrives but sorry, "The 39 Steps" this isn't.
I really found the film to be underwritten, muddled and ultimately unconvincing. Izzard is hard to accept as a proto-James Bond action-hero type. With no real dramatic tension on display at any time, the film just trundled along to a rather flat finish. The acting and cinematography was just okay with the direction likewise lacking spark.
There were also just too many implausible occurrences to contend with, from Izzard's miraculously avoiding death from no less than three separate point-blank shots aimed at him as well as coming through a brutal beating by another pesky German double agent, to Dench's ignorance of what's going on under her own roof even when she walks in on an anti-Semitic lesson given by Juri.
The acting too was rather ordinary I felt by all and sundry and I include Dench and Jim Broadbent in that sweeping criticism. Maybe it's just that I didn't get the movie I anticipated from the blurb, but even once I adapted my expectations, it still failed to hold or entertain me.
Sorry, but I really think that all concerned should have gone back to school themselves before serving up this disappointingly slight entertainment.