Movie Review: Dad's Army

Toby Jones as Captain Mainwaring, left, and Bill Nighy as toff sidekick Sergeant Wilson, fail to live up to the inspired anarchic shtick demonstrated by their forbears.

A mildly entertaining adaptation of the beloved TV series that ran from 1968 to 1977, the movie version of Dad's Army raised the occasional chuckle from the Sunday afternoon Tauranga audience, but little else.

Set just before the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944, the film was able to build on the original series which featured the hilarious bumbling antics of Walmington-on-Sea's home guard during an earlier phase of the war when the invasion of England looked a real possibility.

Mummy's boy Private Frank Pike (Blake Harrison, The Inbetweeners) showed the biggest transition from 1940 by plunging headlong into a silver screen-inspired romance.

And a new dimension was added to the film by the strong presence of women in uniform, including the previously invisible wife of home guard commanding officer Captain Mainwaring.

The movie was supposed to be feel-good fun, featuring a dash of intrigue and derring-do in the shape of the appearance of a German spy in town hell-bent on alerting German High Command on information vital to the D-Day landings.

But the fun simply wasn't that funny. It was all a bit ho-hum. Anyone who loved the original TV characters and was expecting memorable performances from the well-known crop of actors probably felt cheated.

Maybe it was because the essence of the hilarious traits of the original TV characters failed to come across enough in the movie.

Maybe trying to meet cinema-goer expectations of achieving the same irresistible humour of the original platoon was mission impossible.

Or maybe the adaptation was too straight and safe. It needed to be anarchic, to outrageously milk what had made the original characters so darn funny.

Toby Jones did a capable, if somewhat uninspired, job of playing Captain Mainwaring, as did Tom Courtenay in his portrayal of Corporal Jones.

Where was Jonesy's eccentricity?

The biggest disappointment was Bill Nighy's version of Sergeant Wilson. He lacked the wonderfully comedic and dignified absent mindedness of the TV sergeant played by the late John Le Mesurier.

And Bill Paterson was not dour enough to capture the bleak pessimism of undertaker Private Frazer.

The biggest plaudits go to Michael Gambon for his benign medic Private Godfrey, Catherine Zeta-Jones for leading lady glamour and Daniel Mays for his superb blackmarket spiv Private Walker.

Two members of the original cast wove a little magic by appearing.

Frank Williams replayed his role as the Reverend Timothy Farthing, and Ian Lavender was Brigadier Pritchard.

Rating: 2/5 stars.