Not so hot

Rating: 3/10 (1 September 2010)

This film begins beautifully, and for the first half it is amusing and admirable. But then it falls apart halfway through because the filmmakers decided, in a fit of madness, that it would be fun if lots of people began shooting guns all over the place, in a prolonged series of mock-violent incidents which are meant to make the viewer scream with laughter. But it is not funny at all, it is boring, tedious, and wholly ludicrous. So the film was ruined. I was really looking forward to seeing this, because I know Wells, Somerset, so well, and that is where it was made on location. I forced myself to sit through the horrible second half just to see the town in the background. (It is called 'Sandford, Gloucestershire' in the film, and the Bishop's Palace is turned into 'the castle'. In fact, in the film the Palace and the cathedral are never glimpsed, but the Palace Gate and moat and walls are seen, and there is a mildly amusing running joke about an escaped swan from the moat.) Some of the actors do a very fine job of their Somerset accents, and they manage some of the marvellous rural gnomic humour for which countless British film classics in years gone by have been famous, such as Sandy Mackendrick's WHISKEY GALORE! (1949) and Robert Stevenson's OWD BOB (1938, see my review). If only the film had remained in this vein, it could have been something to be proud of. But instead, it is such an abysmal failure that it is not worth a thought.