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Reviews
Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
Returns? Or just remade?
Mary Poppins returns? Uh, yeah.
Again, I took my kids along - it was a spur of the moment thing - and I thought they might enjoy it. I choose these films for my kids: that is my pleasure. They might not wish to watch a particular film (the older one would prefer to watch superheroes, I know) but I have tried not to inflict turkey's on them; I hope they trust my choice.
BUT...
Mary Poppins, returns? This was more like Mary Poppins, redux. Any thoughts that this might be a new sequel are misguided in my opinion. Ok, now it is the original children as adults, but there is still Mary appearing stuck up, still the all knowing Bert character (although he is now Jack, formerly Bert's apprentice, and rather than a sweep he is a lamplighter; how does a chimney sweep apprentice a lamp lighter? He does appear to be a little less of a clown though), there are still the songs, the dancing, and the flights of fantasy into cartoon worlds, the appearance of dozens of lamplighters to dance when required or assist in the finale (although you have to wonder about if all these men are in one place at the same time, what is happening in the rest of London? Did they light the lamps before leaving? Are there areas still unlit? Might there be teams of, for example, town criers carrying out dance routines elsewhere in their stead? In the dark?), the stereotypical dancing penguin waiters, still a park, still a bank, still lots of trades people, and with balloons rather than kites.
Again the kids automatically said they loved it, yet at 2hrs 10mins long it clearly outstayed its welcome by maybe half an hour - my little one was asking me how much longer it was when we hit the 90-odd minute mark. There was lots to see, true, but we were last minute cinema-goers and were in the second row so looking up at the big screen; there might have been a little too much detail which was gone before you could focus on it. My young daughter asked about so many lamp posts in one place during the big lamp lighters dance scene - there appeared to be dozens lit up, although it was still fairly dark. And the plausibility of the lamp lighters turning back time by using their ladders to climb the outside of St Stephen's Tower (the clock tower containing the bell Big Ben, now called Elizabeth Tower) is just unbelievable (ok, this is all fantasy anyway, but really?). Yet the most unbelievable thing was the amount of ethnic placement within the film: the 'goody' lawyer, the 'jolly' milkman, the banker's 'nice' secretary, for example - this was supposed to be 1935 London: you probably had slightly more chance of these characters being in those positions in 1935 Alabama or Tennessee!
I still have no idea what the purpose of introducing Poppins cousin Topsy might have been - other than as a tool for giving Meryl Streep a part in the film; Topsy, to me, undermined Mary Poppins's position but don't ask me what I mean here since I was fighting falling asleep! On reflection might it have been the modern equivalent of the tea party on the ceiling in the original?
And the songs. The songs. Oh, dear - the songs. I cannot recall any one of the songs; I can recall the different dance scenes a little, yet the songs just drifted past like cigarette smoke but without the terrible smell as an aid. Time will tell, of course, but at the moment there is nothing to compare with Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, A Spoonful of Sugar, Step In Time or Chim Chim Cher-ee and the rest. I suppose we should be relieved that there was no attempt at throwing in rap or grime versions to appeal to the target audience.
All in all I was not overly impressed with Mary Poppins Returns - it was more of a remake than a separate story and hopefully will not spawn any more pointless sequels. Talking of which... In the pre film promotions, coming soon: Dumbo? Looks live action and CGI, but do we have to have remakes of every old film?
4/10
Minions (2015)
One star, but only because we cannot rate a film no stars
Minions - good grief. An hour and a half that I will never get back.
Back in 2015 my son went with his cub/scout group, for a special treat, to see this movie. When he got back I asked him how it was; as a family we all liked the Despicable Me films, and this was part of the deal. Surprisingly he was a little reticent - he loves going to the cinema - and non committal. I now know why.
This is an utter abortion of a film. They could have made 18 five minute cartoons, or maybe two good ones, rather than invest the time this move took to drag out in a full length feature.
There was a plot; not a good one, admittedly, and - weak and lame as it was - it looked like someone had taken just two minutes to outline it on one side of a damp sheet of toilet paper. In crayon.
There were characters; again, not good ones (mostly forgettable, in fact) and the director appeared to have tried to make up for the lousy plot by telling most of the voice talent to ham it up like their lives depended on it. There was also quite a bit on national stereotyping, always the sign of a lazy scriptwriter, or a director looking for an easy life.
Even the animation appeared to be of a lower calibre than the usual Despicable Me quality (!); maybe because this was a movie set in the past, possibly to give the trainees and apprentices some on the job experience, but I suspect it was more just to save money.
The soundtrack was the best thing about this film, but then all you can credit Illumination with is choosing it; yet the target audience is 15 and under - who amongst them is going to listen to or even care about a bunch of songs from nearly 50 years ago?
I like the Minions, as characters. It is a concept that has a history in slapstick, and they can be as violent as can be gotten away with in cartoon form because they are quite obviously not human and appear to be indestructible. They work well as criminal, erm, minions in the Despicable Me films and they do make for amusing five minute fillers on the DVDs; this was one or two five minute cartoons stretched full length and packed with filler to pad out the slack. And there was lots of slack.
I doubt if we'll see a Minions 2 anytime soon. I certainly hope not, anyway.
But then, at the time, we would have thought the same about Sing...
The Grinch (2018)
Unneeded remake
It was a cold and wet December afternoon so I took the kids, on the spur of the moment, to see the recently released The Grinch at the local multiplex.
My wife grew up on Dr Seuss and so there was always The Cat In The Hat or Green Eggs And Ham to read to the little ones, no matter how hard I tried to hide them - I really don't rate Dr Seuss, there are too many made up words in the stories (good at rhyming as he was) that I always had a hard time trying to explain to the kids. But no Christmas season was allowed to pass without some version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas! being shown, along with Miracle On 34th Street, It's A Wonderful Life and various versions of A Christmas Carol - my favourite (and the kids, but don't tell their mother) being the Muppets one. I dare say that this one will join the library for Christmas's to come, but for no particular reason as it isn't the best, just currently the most recent.
As I put above, I am not a Dr Seuss fan; please remember that. I am not a Jim Carey fan either, and had to endure countless replayings of his version (now 18 years old!) over the years; at least that film (live action as it is) was an attempt to be different from the original - and shorter - animation. This one reminds me of the 1966 original, with the added benefit of no Jim Carey (always a good thing).
But this new version is unnecessary: it has a slightly different story from the book, which adds nothing to the well known plot that everyone knows. The Grinch is a lot less mean - which even my 6 year old daughter noticed and commented on, loudly - and (at the beginning) just hates Christmas; there will be some adults who will feel sympathy for him if, maybe, you've been forced to endure Christmas music in shops, malls or bars since the end of October or the endless seasonal adverts on TV. Maybe it is political correctness; we cannot have a character as mean as the Grinch representing Christmas when so many businesses depend on it financially to help them get through the year. Maybe we are not allowed to scare our children with a monster who decries the season, even though - like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol - he changes for the better (?) by the end. Maybe the producers looked at the other versions and, having got the go ahead to make another, decided that they had to make this one slightly different while staying slightly the same. Maybe it is just a money grabbing exercise by the film company. Who knows.
But - spoiler alert - he is just...lonely.
Benedict Cumberbatch was decent enough as the Grinch, I guess; he wasn't Jim Carey for a start. Maybe they told him not to be mean or to project his character's hatred for Christmas; if so then he wasn't bad, as such, just poorly advised. For some reason (the US market, maybe?) he put on an American accent (although my son still asked me if it was Sherlock Holmes!), but he was softly spoken and exhibited no aggression as such.
I didn't recognise any of the other voices; is that good or bad for an animation?
Some things are new, not featured in the book or previous films.
Cindy Lou has a gang, who appear seemingly just for the purpose of setting up a Santa trap then just disappear.
There is a goat that bleats at Grinch and Max (the dog), but essentially serves no real purpose (is it a background character from another film?), although it did get the loudest laugh of the entire film.
There is Fred the fat reindeer (who looks like a moose - do they need to do more research at Illumination?) and his family - a potential short story animation filler character for the DVD, like all those Minion animations?
There is Donna Who, Cindy-Lou's mother, who has two toddlers to look after and works all night as well, and is the reason Cindy-Lou wants to trap Santa and ask him to do something nice for her; incidentally there is no mention of the children's father, a dark, hidden secret and maybe a sign that all is not sweetness and light in Whoville?
Oh, and then there is the dreadful Mr Bricklebaum; the sort of Christmas-loving neighbour you'd really hate having next door, who takes to heart the mayor's request to make the town three times as Christmassy and makes his home look like a perfect example of over the top decoration (not that anywhere else in Whoville is any less subtle and restrained in that regard), who believes Grinch to be his best friend in spite of the usual mild (and child friendly) insults, and has a guard dog called Mabel that appeared suddenly - yet without any introduction that I noticed - and was the only potentially violent element in the entire film (think Spike from Tom and Jerry for tenacity) in what makes do for the car chase equivalent in a PG rated Christmas movie for kids.
There was also a narrator who really put in a lot of depth and feeling into his appearance, didn't sound like he'd been asked to read something that meant little to him in any way - that was sarcasm, incidentally.
Music - blurgh. Think there was one remake of the classic You're A Mean One, Mr Grinch which wasn't immediately identifiable (mumble much?), and there was a variation from the chorus of All By Myself by Eric Carmen (from 1975, and itself grabbed from a Rachmaninoff concerto, fact fans!), played on an organ by a lonely and depressed Grinch, which was fine for adults of a certain age but utterly lost on kids (I had to explain that one to my 12 year old son who looked across at me, confused, for an answer) because it obviously meant something yet they wouldn't get the joke unless they were familiar with the song.
There was also a bit of Christmas In Hollis by Run DMC which, again, is fine for adults (again, of a certain age) or those straight outta tha 'hood but, yet again, above the heads (way above) of the poor target audience. Overall the rest of the music was either lousy or just unforgivably forgettable, even after I cribbed from the music credits on this site.
One thing that really ages a film is the music used; sometimes an apparently timeless film will fail after a few years because while the plot carries on working well the music just lets it down. Happy and Despicable Me 2 work well, while having watched Sing within the last two weeks I can't remember any of the songs, although most were contemporary of the time (2016) or old classics. This film will be let down by its poor choice of music.
The animation was probably the best thing about this film. My young daughter gasped when we saw Whoville all lit up for the first time. Some good snow and fur imitation too.
My kids, once again, liked the film. The 6 year old said she enjoyed it, and the 12 year old said it was "alright, nice", although in the car they started talking about Ralph Breaks The Internet (which they saw two weeks ago) and that is probably not a good sign for The Grinch.
Alright: was the world waiting for another remake of this story - on the whole I'd say not. My children would give it (and every other film I take them to, unfortunately) a firm 10/10, but I am writing this review and feel that 6/10 is a little fairer (for using Run DMC's Christmas In Hollis, otherwise it would be a 4/10).
Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)
Lazy, predictable - another Disney hit, of course
Just seen Ralph Breaks the Internet, on the third day after it opened in Britain.
What can I say? I know this film is for kids - granted, it is probably better for older kids because certain nuances will be lost on the little ones - but there was something for parents too; in the showing I was at there were outbreaks of stifled laughter at certain points from adults rather than the children. And yet it was all so predictable - plot spoiler: a series of Ralph-created mayhem scenarios that get sorted out by (mainly) Vanellope until the end.
But some (a lot?) of the characters will be lost on one or other age group - I couldn't identify all the princess cameo characters, and I'm not sure my six year old would either. And the song: totally out of character for Vanellope, or the franchise I guess; my young daughter did become restless at that point - her brother was still stuffing popcorn into his mouth, so it was difficult to tell.
In many ways this film is totally an in-joke for the studios, maybe in the same way that things were hidden in the movie for geeks to find - "isn't that the car from...?", "who was that in that scene...?", "that character has a slightly different voice/wearing the wrong shade of blue shirt/just wouldn't do that..." etc.
Someone somewhere will be feeling very, very smug, and it's not me.
Lots of internet brand name placement too, and I'm guessing that no one was too upset because they were all shown in a positive light (Ebay, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and Google all spring immediately to mind - although YouTube obviously wouldn't pay the asking price since the video site, probably a major plot device in the film, was given a different name), a nice little advertisement for when the kiddies have some money (catch them young?). There was a lot to see in the internet scenes, but other than one mention for 'sassy housewives want to meet you' by a pop-up there was no reference to one of the big things that the internet has made available to all; even phishing was up there, although without any demonstration that this is a major internet problem - but then this is supposed to be a children's movie.
And my kids said they loved it; just not enough to hang about until the end though - I convinced them both to wait a little while (although I didn't know anything was coming, but there always seems to be something in the credits these days) until the exploding bunny skit, by which time we were the only ones left in the theatre other than the cleaner.
The youngest subsequently gave it (I think, but don't hold me to it) 700 million out of ten, while her brother gave it a firm 10/10; me, I believe it was lazy, and that Disney is not terribly bothered whether you enjoyed it or not - they've already got your money. But it kept the kids entertained for about two and a half hours on a rainy afternoon, and therefore I'm giving 5/10.
And talking of money... I believe we sat through a solid half hour of adverts before the film actually started, especially when we were told it started at a specific time: why the hell are we paying so much to watch advertising before viewing a product loaded with what was essentially adverts?
Bewitched (2005)
Another nail in the comedy coffin
Anyone remember the old TV comedy Bewitched? This mess up has the same name and the same basic concept, but it is used as a vehicle for (this will make you laugh. Not) Will Ferrell! Yes, the story is not about a witch in the real world but about Will Ferrell failing to be funny.
In fact the entire movie was not remotely amusing.
I am not a big Nicole Kidman fan; she appears to have just one facial expression and uses it at every opportunity. This film might explain that expression - sort of confused incomprehension - since a role that maybe her agent (and the rest of us) thought would be the lead was torn away and the emphasis instead given to Ferrell (I can only think that he has some blackmail material on somebody important) to promote what should be a background character to be the lead. Want to know how bad this was - imagine a film being made of Breaking Bad with the lead role being taken by another teacher who never actually appeared in the original series.
Dreadful.
Jack and Jill (2011)
Had hoped this might have buried his career...
I have recently had to think about what I considered the worst film I'd had the bad luck to pay to see but part from before it ended (it was Borat, and I lasted 20 minutes). But I had to think about those films that I had watched because 'others' wanted to see them and I was forced to watch to maintain healthy relations with the rest of my family. Strangely my wife seemed to go through a period of believing in the talent of Adam Sandler - strangely, because I have watched several of his efforts and have yet to recall even getting a smile out of this dolt, but then she has a habit of not understanding the concept of humour and, despite watching both apparent 'funnymen' Sandler and Will Ferrell attempts, does seem to come away very disappointed.
The funniest thing about this film was that it got made at all. Does nobody actually read Sandler's scripts or have the guts to ask him if he knows 'funny', or needs it explained to him? Seriously, had I watched this at a cinema I would have led a crowd back to the box office with flaming torches to demand our money back; luckily it was on TV, but it still rankles.
All involved deserve to never work again.
0 out of anything - although I appear to have rated it one star?
Outland (1981)
At least there are no aliens involved
Sean Connery is not a very convincing actor; he has made a career of playing Sean Connery and done it very well over a long period, but in this film he didn't even bother to try acting less wooden than normal. Stomping around scowling at everything and everyone, sounding extremely bored when talking with both his wife and child when he should be trying to convince both that he loves them (and what were they thinking - Connery has an accent, a distinctly Scottish accent, yet it must be assumed that his son didn't hang around with him much for it to have rubbed off because his accent is very much your all American kid's, like everyone else. I know America makes the movies but that doesn't mean that every person in space in the future will have an American accent!), and his speaking is both forced and telegraphed: you know what he was going to say before he says it. In fact the entire plot was forced and telegraphed, stolen from High Noon and with the mystery solved fairly quickly so that all that is left is to see how the hero wins the day - and he will, because he is Sean Connery and you know he will not be killed by a bunch of unknowns.
The only, ONLY bright spot in the entire film was Frances Sternhagen as Dr Lazarus, the bad tempered and reluctant, motor-mouthed sidekick who is the only person on the colony to help Connery when he needs it; her name was obviously somebody's poor attempt at humour. Peter Boyle was unconvincing as the bad guy, instead appearing as though he had an earpiece hidden away and telling him what to say and how to react to Connery's stilted dialogue - he could have stayed home and phoned it in. Every other person in the film could have been a cardboard cutout for all the effect they made.
Just how bad was knowledge about the rules of physics in 1981? Exploding bodies? Variations in gravity depending on which side of a bulkhead you are? And the shuttle arriving early - nice idea if you know nothing about getting from a to b (airliners on Earth fly great circles since you cannot fly in a straight line for thousands of mile, but they have headwinds to contend with). And heat - there appeared to be a thin wall between the pressurised interior and the great outdoors, certainly in those walkways, yet there was no mention of the potential of frostbite or getting frozen to the walls.
This film just depressed me.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
Borat - my spoiler is that this film is rubbish (oh, what a give away)
I recently wrote a review of Dad's Army (2016) and was shocked to see that film offered up as the worst film ever made. I hated it; it was a poor movie in every respect, but I watched it for about 10 minutes longer than I watched the abysmal Borat - and I will never get those 20 minutes back either.
I won't lie - I didn't pay to see this sorry excuse for entertainment at a cinema. It had actually just appeared on Sky Movies (pay to view) or whatever it was at the time, so this had to be way back around 2007, and my wife really wanted to see it because of the reviews she had read somewhere. Me, I knew of Sacha Baron Cohen by his reputation and what I had heard was enough for me to suggest we watch something else (or poke cocktail sticks into each other's eyes, for fun) but no. So she watched with enthusiasm and I watched with a heavy heart and Samaritans on speed dial. After 10 minutes she was rather less enthusiastic, and at the 20 minute mark she actually apologised to me (a rare occurrence) for choosing to watch something so moronic and suggested we watch something a little more entertaining instead. I forget what we did watch, but it was infinitely better (and, whatever it was, be it Schindler's List or whatever, it would have been funnier) than watching Borat.
Borat was infantile. It was crude. It was offensive - and that was just the 20 minutes that we watched.
We both agreed on these things the following day when discussing why we quit a movie we had paid good money to watch, and when talking with friends we discovered we were not alone - in fact we had difficulty in finding anyone who would admit to having watched the thing to the end; those who did mainly said they had paid to see the film and that walking out was not an option. No one said that it was as funny as we had all been led to believe it was and, 11-odd years later, not one person I have spoken to recently has good memories of this shameful movie.
Incidentally, today I was looking at DVD's in a charity shop and there was Borat (99p). Interesting to note that, apparently, there is even more shocking footage that is included as bonus extras that didn't make it to the original edit. Just imagine how much worse it could have been... Also interesting that the bits taken from reviews, telling us how fantastic this production was, are from what would have been regarded as 'lad's mags' that have gone to the wall.
Baron Cohen has said something along the lines of he uses his characters to expose the prejudices prevalent in society. I would ask if he isn't perhaps waving a red cape before a bull and when the bull charges he tells us that this demonstrates that bulls are obviously monsters whose violent and antisocial actions he is exposing. Maybe he could be persuaded to poke an angry beehive with a stick, naked, to show that bees can also be provoked, rather than giving us anymore of his lame characters. Either way, he is not someone whose films I will rush out to watch. In fact nearly anything with the name Sacha Baron Cohen in it means that, generally, we will not watch it - although the kids love the Madagascar series, but were indifferent to Hugo - so there will be no chance of deliberately watching anymore of his crass output.
In summary: this is absolutely the worst film I have ever had the misfortune to pay money to view. I gave a score of 1 because there is no lower figure, but this production - to me - would seriously justify there being a minus score opportunity for IMDB reviews.
Dad's Army (2016)
Stupid. Boy...
Sorry, this was absolute garbage. Some well known names might have been here but the thing stank worse than an African refugee camps dug out latrine when everyone is suffering with...well, you get the idea.
I bought this as a present for my elderly parents, for whom the original TV programme has been a staple in their viewing habits since the late 1960s; it is nearly always playing somewhere. Suffice to say that having decided to view it myself first (it had been something we had watched together as a family when I was growing up, so I wondered at how it might have been updated for today's viewing public) I was able to stomach nearly thirty minutes of this sad production (ten minutes more than Borat, mind you) before deciding that it had stolen more than enough time from my life.
It was taken back to where I had bought it with the lie attached that it turned out that my parents had already got it! Since then (just four days) I have been in three charity shops that had copies of this DVD for sale at prices between 79p and £1 - one shop had two of them with one showing a different charity shop price tag on it demonstrating that it had been bought, obviously watched and then re-donated (to a different charity shop, probably out of embarrassment) within the space of a week.
I fail to see the attraction in making a new film of an old TV programme with new actors recreating old characters. It won't attract a new audience unless the old audience are enthused enough to implore them to view it, surely, and this old audience will just be turned off by the way the old, familiar, gentle characters are replaced with newer yet unrecognisable faces (some were vaguely similar to the original actors) suddenly 'sexed' up in a harsh and abrasive, more modern fashion. Bill Nighy can usually be relied upon to do a fantastic job, but here he appears to have just used that far away gaze all the time that made him appear to be dreaming of actually being somewhere else where he could actually act.
Do yourself a favour, people: unless you are a student of film/television and want to see how not to honour an old TV favourite, please do not bother with this utter abortion of a film. Discerning charity shop movie buyers are not even bothering with it, and that is saying something.
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
Clichéd, by the book, lazy - you get the message
A quid in a charity shop - having enjoyed most of the others, and with this one being the most recent, I couldn't believe my luck! But now I know why someone donated it, and I feel short changed...
The Tom Cruise action series rumbles on and does so in a text book tick- the-box fashion - car chases (tick), chases on foot with gun and fights and stuff (tick), chases in the dark (tick), world wide locations (tick), Cruise being the only one with the 'vision' (tick), Cruise going on the run (tick), subterfuge and deception as standard (tick), the authorities not appreciating Cruise and his IMF chums (tick), Cruise having to do something death defying (tick) several times (tick), Cruise on a motorbike (tick), Cruise going against the advice of his IMF colleagues (tick), guns, lots of guns and gadgets and technology (tick), Cruise saving the girl (tick), the day (tick), the world (tick), etc (tick).
The writers appear to have either fallen asleep or just grown lazy when coming up with this one: the CIA (boo, hiss) want to close down Cruise (hurrah!) and his playmates for not being reliable with saving the world, citing the plots of previous films (breaking into CIA headquarters, destruction of the Kremlin, the missile that didn't wipe out Seattle, etc) to which Jeremy Renner (as Brandt) has to appear before a board of bigwigs and the CIA boss (Alec Baldwin) to argue his case for them not to be closed down (wasn't Renner a field agent in the previous movies? Where was their boss anyway?), which the CIA want, purely so that they can control an out of control Ethan Hawk (Cruise). But when the IMF (Cruise's boys) subsequently gets closed down, and absorbed into the CIA, Cruise goes underground to carry on his investigation into a group that everyone except Cruise (obviously!) believes does not exist. Baldwin decides that Cruise has gone renegade and pursues him like there isn't a bigger problem in the world to occupy his time (incidentally, it is unfortunate that the world moves on and Baldwin now plays the orange US president on SNL, because that was all I could think of in every one of his scenes), even to the point of making it a shoot to kill mission, seemingly because Cruise made a fool of him. There was a beautiful British enemy agent (actually working for the British secret service - or was she?) in a bikini, there was an unemotionally evil criminal boss with a weird voice, there was an evil British government minister with ugly glasses and a dull voice, there were a few evil henchmen who looked as though central casting had been asked to just send some mean-looking east European-looking hombres (own hair not important) along, there was blundering Benji and dependable Luther to do the technical stuff, warn Cruise not to give the secret 'gadget thing' to the opposition and look scared, confused and knowing as required.
Like I said earlier, straight out of a text book; sometimes the end result of a scenario was practically telegraphed, it was so predictable. The mystery came from trying to figure out whether the girl would die before the end of the film, and how the baddie would die (spoiler - he doesn't).
On the DVD there was an additional special feature, a short called Cruise Control, about (surprise surprise) Tom Cruise, a little propaganda piece in favour of Cruise, with his colleagues (from both in front of and behind the camera) telling us that he was a dream to work with, that he was on the side of the movie goer, that he was dedicated to bringing the best film possible to the viewer, etc. My eyes glazed over and as a result I missed the end, but it is safe to assume that Cruise overcame the baddies, got the girl, and saved the world as usual.
I have been of the opinion that M:I2 was the worst of the bunch; it might still be if I can't convince myself that lazy and predictable equals bad.
Whoops Apocalypse (1982)
Whoops! A wonderful old gem
I have just managed to acquire this series on a second hand DVD (watched all three hours of it in one session) and, despite the fact that it is around 36 years old, it is still as brilliant as I recalled it.
Yes, there is audience laughter that sometimes obscures the dialogue. Yes, there is quite a bit of ham. Yes, it is more of its time than would be allowed now. Yes, each episode features around 1.5mins of front piece/titles before the action starts (and with each episode coming in at under 28mins that does strike me as a lot). BUT...it has some great great laughs, and that is what really matters.
Stand outs: From the cast, John Cleese will always attract the most attention, the man was at his peak at the time and certainly giving it a go playing multiple characters in the guise of a nuke-smuggling mercenary.
David Kelly as the Iranian servant Abdab, blindfolded so that he does not view his Shah; a hapless yet fawning foil in the same vein as Basil Fawlty's Manuel.
Ed Bishop as motor-mouthed, omnipresent news presenter Jay Garrick, delivering the headlines at what seems like 150 words a minute.
Good old Geoffrey Palmer, stalwart, playing his standard hangdog character to perfection as the British foreign secretary to a prime minister who suddenly declares himself to be Superman.
John Barron, a US adviser running rings around his naive president by arranging for a nuclear bomb to be stolen and trying to boost the presidents miserable ratings percentage by staging an assassination attempt.
Reading the other reviews here it does appear that this comedy has been difficult to get hold of - it has been issued(?) on DVD a few times, it seems, but how many were produced in each production run? I believe I borrowed a VHS from a mate in the early 1990s - so my advice is to get it if you happen upon it, it is a gem.
My pre-owned DVD comes with the big screen 'adaptation' that I haven't yet watched (different story, different characters, different cast in a film that, by all accounts, was made for an American audience and seems to have suffered accordingly - don't think I've seen it this century, but will review it when I have), and the dust jacket does feature images from both productions, including (worryingly?) a still of topless newsreader Kirstie Pooley: wonder if she would be happy with that, all these years later!