Dad’s Army (film): reviews

I don’t really know why they decided to remake Dad’s Army as a feature film, given there were so many better sitcoms in the UK.

While the assembled cast looks pretty good, British critics have branded it a “missed opportunity.”

And that’s putting it nicely.

Independent:
The story is weak but that needn’t have mattered if the script was funny enough and the characters sufficiently rounded. But memorable jokes are few and far between, and a clumsy Carry On element sits uneasily with memories of the TV show’s almost child-like innocence. The film’s biggest problem is that it lacks a dramatic focus: Ms. Zeta-Jones strides with spurious purpose through the production looking like a well-preserved shop mannequin, and Toby Jones’ Mainwaring somehow fails to dominate the stage as he should.

The Sun:
The problem Dad’s Army has — like nearly all sitcom-to-movie adaptations — is stretching the sitcom format over a feature-length movie. Here, the appearance of Catherine Zeta-Jones as a sultry spy does little but give Mainwaring and Wilson someone’s affections to fight over and sidelines everyone else. Lance-Corporal “Don’t Panic” Jones (Tom Courtenay), one of the most loved from the original series, and Private “We’re doomed” Frazer (Bill Paterson) have little to do but wait to reel out their catchphrases. Most disappointingly, there are flashes of brilliance that give you an idea of what could have been if a little more time had been spent on writing some better gags. The outtakes over the credits, which see the cast ad-libbing and having a laugh, are far funnier than anything in the film itself. While it ticks some nostalgia boxes, Dad’s Army simply feels like a missed opportunity.

Standard:
Two performances stand out. The wonderful Frank Williams, now 84, the huffy vicar in the original, appears again, delightfully, in the same role, suddenly bringing authenticity. And contrariwise, weedy Pike has been equipped with a girlfriend here, an entirely new character called Vera, fetchingly played by Holli Dempsey, with a freshness and reality made easier by her not being any kind of re-vamp. But making the film ever so slightly more genuinely about the Second World War — even showing the Nazis, including possibly Hitler himself, in the Reich Chancellery, ordering the Cobra mission — stirs an unease the original never did. That was a genuine period piece, this is a fake. Think even a little about the realities of that war now and any laughter, even at the most harmless pratfalls, sticks in the throat.

Leicester Mercury:
But alas, no. Director Oliver Parker and screenwriter Hamish McColl – stupid boys – have fashioned a flimsy plot that would barely stretch to one TV episode let alone 100 minutes and peppered it with the show’s catchphrases, while praying our abiding affection for the characters will compensate for long passages without a discernible punchline. Limp innuendo-laden banter about sausages barely merits a smirk and the many pratfalls are predictable. From uninspired beginning to muddled end, it’s a cultural smash’n’grab that goes through the motions and will ultimately be remembered as a badly missed opportunity.

Den of Geek:
On the whole, there are just about enough good jokes to make this worth your while, but for every amusing moment there are several that don’t quite come off, whether it’s clumsily shoe-horned in catchphrases (as if somebody panicked that there weren’t enough and pencilled them in at random moments – some are even said offscreen, indicating post-production dubbing) or poorly executed physical comedy, as in a French farce-style sequence where Mainwaring, Wilson and Pike all arrive at Rose’s lodgings in the mistaken belief that she’s trying to seduce them. That said, the occasional gag hits home – there’s a delightfully off-the-wall moment involving a baby with a Hitler moustache that makes you wish the film had been just that little bit edgier. Plot-wise, the film meanders considerably in the middle section, more or less as you’d expect from a sitcom plot dragged out to feature length. However, Parker does manage to pull off a surprisingly decent climax with what passes for an action sequence, given its mostly geriatric cast.