Who did they think they were kidding?
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Who did they think they were kidding?
A new film version of the classic BBC TV comedy series about the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard was never likely to win over fans of the much loved sitcom.
But in fairness, while certainly not great, this isn’t all bad. The casting is mostly successful, Toby Jones actually achieving the near impossible mission of filling Arthur Lowe’s shoes as Captain Mainwaring. Line of Duty star Daniel Mays is also excellent as the spiv Private Walker and Michael Gambon (despite a needlessly crude scene in which he pisses on another character) does an admirable job of evoking the spirit of the placid Private Godfrey (originally played by Arnold Ridley). There is an admirable attempt to expand the female cast (perhaps a slight failing of the original show) including Alan Partridge’s Felicity Montagu as the formidable and previously unseen Elizabeth Mainwaring.
There is quite a lot that is bad though. Although mostly competent, most of the cast such as Tom Courtenay as Jones (a genuinely old actor playing the character Clive Dunn played in middle age) and Bill Nighy’s Wilson generally remind you of the old cast just enough to annoy you rather than truly replacing them.Blake Harrison of the Inbetweeners completely misjudges Pike playing him more as a debonair lech than as the juvenile “stupid boy” Ian Lavender perfected despite both actors playing the role at a similar age.
Like the 1971 film, the movie errs in making the platoon face a very specific foe in this case in the form of spy Catherine Zeta Jones. In the TV series, the real but unseen threat posed by the Nazis overseas was usually deemed sufficient although in fairness this is perhaps an inevitable consequence of expanding Dad’s Army into a full length film.
Unanswered questions abound though. Why does the film start in 1944 when in reality that was the year the Home Guard ceased activity anyway? Why is one group of characters shown in fox hunting regalia, when hunting never occurred during the war? Why does the plot hinge on a civilian telephone call to occupied Paris, an impossibility at the time? Why does Jones suddenly start making a fairly deep philosophical point on one occasion? Why is Wilson suddenly revealed as an ex-university don?
This isn’t a disaster and is certainly respectful to the memory of the series. But forty years on from the end of the series, one wonders if even despite its surprisingly strong box office (mostly, like the Brexit result, due to older audiences) if this will be our final visit to Walmington-on-Sea.
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