Review
Dad’s Army
(2016)
By Dermot Hudson
Director: Oliver
Hudson; DJ Films; 1 hour 40 mins; PG; General release
There
has been a big fanfare over the remake of the famous comedy Dad’s Army with
an all-star cast including Catherine Zeta Jones and Bill Nighy, as well cameo
roles from surviving members of the original cast, namely Ian Lavender and
Frank Williams as the Vicar.
Dads Army was a comedy about the Home
Guard of the Second World War, which was originally called the Local Defence
Volunteers. They were usually composed of men too old for active military
service, hence the title Dad’s Army. The original series ran for about eight years
and had its own spin off film version as well as a BBC Radio Four series. Much
of the comedy centred on the pomposity of the local Home Guard commander
Captain Mainwaring and the incompetence of the local guard Home Guard. The
series give rise to many popular catchphrases such as “Don’t Panic!” and “You
Stupid Boy”.
However despite the all-star cast and being
talked up by the media the film turned out to be not as good as the original.
Toby Jones as Captain Mainwaring lacked the presence of Arthur Lowe who played
the part in the original series. The modern Mainwaring lacked the pomposity of
the earlier one and was not as funny. Similarly Bill Nighy, stepping into the
shoes of John Le Mesurier, was not quite right in the part of Wilson.
Many of the original characters were
either downgraded in their roles or totally absent. ARP Warden Hodges (in the
original series this part was played by Bill Pertwee), who was the perpetual
rival of Mainwaring, deriding him as “Napoleon”, had only a few lines, as did
the Vicar. The Verger, who was the assistant to the Vicar and accomplice of ARP
Warden Hodges, was absent from the film, as was the upper-class Captain Square
of the Eastgate Home Guard platoon.
The real star of film appeared to be Catherine
Zeta Jones as a German spy, ”Agent Cobra”, who masquerades as a female
journalist and tries to use her seductive charms to ferret out secrets – something
that would have been considered too risqué in the original series.
The motivations of Ms Zeta Jones’s
character were never made clear. Why did an Oxford graduate end up in German
intelligence? Was she meant to be a Mosleyite, a Leaseite or a female William
Joyce?
Watching the film it was very apparent
that the original BBC series and the feature film made in the early 1970s were
far superior to its present incarnation.
It
is worth mentioning in passing that although the original series was full of
laughs it also had a darker side. None of the characters were working class,
they were all small businessman or management save for junior bank clerk Pike
(the “stupid boy”) and the retired Private Godfrey. In one episode when a
Soviet dignitary visit’s the town, a few anti-communist remarks are made. In
another episode the platoon are sent to arrest in an IRA volunteer.
On balance the later film is worse because
the black-marketeering spiv Private Walker is elevated to hero status whereas
the original Walker was a self-centred cynic. This in my opinion reflects a
shift to the Right in ideology, not that the original series was in any way
progressive as pretended by some.
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