I havent read the book, but is it a comment on the nazi-regime? It is very clear that the weasels in the movie are to resemble nazies. They all have sort of uniforms with a symbol on the shoulder with the same shape and colour as the swastika and at the end of the movie they have symbolic flags to drape the walls with just like the nazies used.
shareYou're right, the weasels could resemble nazis, but the book was first published in 1908, so that wasn't what Kenneth Grahame had in mind.
Terry Jones may have thought of them that way, however, I don't know.
Bean Girl: Eddie Kay Sean
No, I'm not a groupie, I'm a roadie!
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Why do people always insist on overanalyzing things. THEY'RE WEASALS!
shareThe first thing I noticed during the scene with the weasels in the hall with the red white and black flags draped behind them was the nazi imagery. It's almost too hard to ignore. It's hardly a criticism though, if George Lucas can do it I don't see why Terry Jones can't. By the way, I thought it was terrific for a family film, and the fact that the cast is basically a who;s who of classic british sitcoms doesn't do it any harm.
This is the business we have chosen...
Sorry to "over-analyse" things (you'll understand, I hope, that I prefer to set my own parameters of analysis), but - as I said in my review - the Weasels are the Thatcherite Tories (and, as it turned out - Blair/Brown's New Labour).
I thought they represented the soldiers of the Franco-Prussian War: there is a scene when the weasels are in Toad Hall which is an exact diorama of the famous painting of Prussian troops in their muddy jackboots making merry by the fire in a French Chateau. I can't remember the title or artist, but you know the one I mean.
shareNot nazis - Thatcherite Public schoolboys who want to develop the riverside to make money.
So an attack on Market economics that destroys habitats - etc..
They are shown at a masonic type feast at the end - with Masonic type insignia.
Given the constant (essentially left-of-centre) political references in Monty Python's Flying Circus (often to now long-forgotten figures such as Reginald Maudling and Peter Neiswand), it isn't at all far-fetched to suggest that Terry Jones would want to use this film, even if it is based (loosely) on an acknowledged children's classic, to make at least a few incidental satirical points.
Yes, it IS a children's film; that is blindingly obvious. But children have parents or guardians, who are ADULTS; it is not at all surprising that their entertainment needs also have to enter into filmmakers' calculations, if they are not to be utterly bored - indeed, so repelled that they will find any excuse not to take the children in their charge to said films!
Of course the fine detail of these satirical allusions will not easily withstand the passage of time (and the film is now a decade-and-a-half old), or an Atlantic crossing. That does not argue for their absence.