DAD'S ARMY

UK, 2016, 100 minutes, Colour.
Toby Jones, Bill Nighy, Tom Courtenay, Michael Gambon, Bill Patterson, Catherine Zeta Jones, Daniel Mays, Blake Harrison, Oliver Tobias, Mark Gattis, Emily Atack, Sarah Lancashire, Alison Steadman, Julia Foster, Annette Crosby, Ian Lavender, Frank Williams.
Directed by Oliver Parker.

Dad’s Army was a popular British television series from 1968 to 1977, 80 episodes. It showed life on the English Channel coast, the popular reserve comprising generally older men or those not able to be enlisted. There was also a women’s service. The tone of the series, comical, taking place 24 years plus after the events, showed a loyalty to Britain while sending up a lot of the pomposity of the characters and their frequent befuddlement.

The cast was exemplary with Arthur Lowe excelling as the self-important Captain Mainwaring whose pomposity bubble was always being pricked. In support were such character actors is John Le Mesurier, Clive Owen, John Laurie, Ian Lavender.

This 2016 film is an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of the series. probably does not mean much at all to younger audiences, just something of a sendup of old pompous types. For audiences who remember the series, there will be the inevitable comparisons. There will also be some disappointment in the thinness of the screenplay for the film.

The setting is the same, the coast near Dover, the platoon of generally ineffectual older men, the presentation of the women (more determined and coming to the rescue at the end). The setting is MI5 tracking down a spy who sends a message with a pigeon (shot down by some kids on the coast) giving information about the D-Day? landing. Berlin then sends in a spy to get more information.

The spy is in the form of Catherine Zeta Jones, all 1940s glamour and high fashion, who is able to charm all the men in the platoon – the screenplay overemphasising all the infatuation and the potential for infidelity. The spy pretends that she’s writing an article about the platoon but is found out by Sgt Godfrey’s two sisters (who seem to have extraordinary access to fashion shops and the records in occupied Paris). She sets up her old Oxford tutor, Wilson, Bill Nighy, who is infatuated with her to the upset of his wife, and he is held as the spy suspect so that she can escape by U-boat.

Audiences will be looking very strongly at Toby Jones in the Arthur Lowe role and he does quite a fair job. Bill Nighy has the John Le Mesurier role, Tom Courtenay the Clive Owen role of the local butcher, Michael Gambon the final Ridley rule, Bill Patterson the John Laurie Scott’s role, Blake Harrison the Ian Lavender role. Daniel Mays is Walker. An 84-year-old Frank Williams plays the minister that he played in the series. And Ian Lavender has a guest role as a brigadier. Mark Gattis appears as the golf-playing and hunting officer in charge. The women’s cast includes Alison Steadman, Sarah Lancashire and, as Michael Gambon’s Godfrey’s sisters, Julia Foster and Annette Crosbie. All in all a strong cast.

While the atmosphere is the same, the emphasis on the seductive femme fatale spy, the men’s infatuation, the amount of time of screenplay given over to this, undermines the impact of the comedy as well as the drama. However, it does pick up in the final moments with a battle on the beach, the U-boat, the spy trying to escape, Captain Mainwaring diving into the water to capture her, one of the local girls tied to a rock with the tide rising and her boyfriend saving her, and the women coming to the rescue and firing at the Germans along with Daniel Mays as Walker, the black market expert, who sacrifices his truck of goods by having explosives in it and crashing into the Germans.

Some moments of nostalgia, some moments of amusement, memories of the British in the war, some ironic comments about the instant ability to be infatuated by the men of the town, but…